R.S. Thomas Award: prize-winning fiction bears witness to criminal justice

Gosia Buzzanca

A short story bearing witness to the criminal justice system has won this year’s prestigious R.S. Thomas Award.

Run by Bangor University, the esteemed prize celebrates the achievements of emerging writers and serves as a memorial to one of Wales’s most famous poets, R.S. Thomas. This year’s award, sponsored by the H’mm Foundation, has been won by Elizabeth Tunstall.

Elizabeth’s story, “If Bluebirds Fly”, was the highest-scoring dissertation of 2025 on the MA in Creative Writing (English). The piece draws on her experience working in a prison, where she facilitated a prisoner-led peer mentor scheme that promoted reading.

She received the engraved Venetian glass award at the celebration following Bangor’s Postgraduate Graduation Ceremony.

Reacting to the award, Elizabeth said “I feel very honoured to have received this prize. Completing the Creative Writing MA at Bangor has been a wonderful experience, enabling me to develop my writing skills and find the confidence to tell important stories.

“I hope that through my writing, voices that are usually sidelined in society might be given a platform, particularly those who feel constrained or diminished by circumstance.

“Receiving the R.S.Thomas prize for my dissertation about those embroiled in the criminal justice system has helped to validate my belief that the marginalised deserve to be heard and need to be witnessed.”

Professor Tony Brown of the R.S. Thomas Research Centre described the winning piece as an excellent story – absorbing, clever and at times moving.

He said: “Just before I read it, the radio news was covering the build up of remand prisoners in the British prison system: this the story has real currency.

“I am delighted that one of our creative writing students has produced something so worthy of the H’mm Foundation’s prize.”

Commenting on the award, Professor Zoë Skoulding, who leads the MA, said: “We’ve seen some exceptional talent on this programme and we’re grateful to Ali Anwar of the H’mm Foundation for this support and recognition.

“It’s fantastic to see this year’s award go to a writer whose work is so passionately and humanely connected with the world around her, just as R.S. Thomas’s was.”

Ali Anwar, the Director of The H’mm Foundation has commented: “We are delighted to sponsor this year’s Award in partnership with the School of Arts, Culture and Language at Bangor University to celebrate R.S. Thomas, his work and his legacy.”