Featuring  a wonderful hands-on experience of VR narratives from One to One Development Trust, and entries from 6 continents, this year’s event truly showed how rich the world of new media writing is.

The afternoon session with One to One’s Dreaming Methods allowed participants to try out the amazing Digital Fiction Curios VR world. Dreaming Methods is responsible for some of the internet’s earliest media-rich digital fiction. As with much of the work submitted to the New Media Writing Prize over the years, a lot of it was created in Flash, a technology that will be removed from all major web browsers in 2020. Curios archives and re-purposes Flash works originally made as far back as 1999 and makes it possible to explore them in VR.

Over 100 people passed through the digital doors and were able to explore the beautiful world of the digital curiosity shop.

The Future Journalism award was won by Mahmoud El Wakea’s  ‘Made in Prison’, an investigation of Jihadi radicalisation in Egypt. A powerful use of text, media and interactivity.

The Unicorn Training Student award was won by Kenneth Sanchez for ‘Escaping the Chaos’. His emotive portrayal of Venezuelan migrants in Peru really brought to life the personal dramas of people trying to better their lives.

The Dot award for 2019 went to Claire Pollard, the editor of  Modern Poetry in Translation: the £500 award will allow MPiT to digitise their magazine, offering interactivity and digital enhancements to their print work. We will feature more about this project soon!

Finally, the if:book UK New Media Writing Prize, the main category, was won by Maria Ivanova and her team of writers from Belarus. ‘The Life of Grand Duchess Elizabeth’ is a beautifully designed and moving account of the inspiring  life a Russian Duchess.

Here’s what Maria and Anna of the team said to us: