The St Mary’s Incident Report Competition
Sharpen your pencils and get your brains in gear...
The St Mary’s Incident Report Competition
Sharpen your pencils and get your brains in gear — it’s time to file a St Mary’s Incident Report. We’re inviting you to invent your own character, from any department and document a jump that went slightly off the rails in full official style, complete with all the dignity, detail and barely concealed chaos such reports require. Your entry should be 800–1,200 words and must feature one real historical figure, one entirely unexpected object and the immortal phrase: “This was not my fault.”
We know how much you enjoy the formal format and the inevitable escalation from “minor complication” to “catastrophic development,” so this is your chance to let things go gloriously wrong. Submit your report to the proper authorities and remember — clarity, accuracy, and plausible deniability are everything.
The prize will be a £50 or $65 gift card from Bookshop.org (print and eBooks available in UK and USA)
CLICK HERE to enter. Closing date is 24th March 2026. Judging will be by a reader poll from 25th March with the winner announced on 31st March
This is such fun! My first entry might have been a bit to close to Jodi Taylor's characters, so I rewrote it and submitted a corrected story today March 6, 2026.
I submitted an entry yesterday but it has not yet appeared on the website. Hoping all is well?
John Langley