BBC says prize writer is a knockout

More than 400,000 listened in when the BBC broadcast British copywriter Joel Willans’s short story, The voice, the fish woman and the coconut girlie, in December 2008.

When not coming up with slogans for Konsepti, Willans focuses on fiction. He wrote his first short stories after studying creative writing at the London School of Journalism. In the last couple of years he has had over forty pieces published in a wide variety of magazines and anthologies.

On top of this, Willans has already achieved an impressive run of success in competitions. This culminated in 2008 when The voice, the fish woman and the coconut girlie won him the prestigious Yeovil Literary Prize. The judge, novelist Judith Allnat, was full of praise for the story. “The title is intriguing and the story lives up to its promise. It’s apparent that we are in the hands of a confident, original writer,” she states on the competition website.

No wonder that the BBC were on the phone to Willans soon after, asking if they could broadcast the story on the radio.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Willans says. “At first I thought the call must be some kind of a hoax. For an Englishman, getting solicited by the BBC is like being invited to dinner by the Queen!”

The BBC has since nurtured Willans’s talent by asking to use more his work in the future. At Konsepti we agree that creative individuals like Joel Willans should be nurtured, which is why we’re more than happy to have him as part of our award-winning international team.