Creative writing is about many things, not least of them empathy: seeing the world from the perspective of others, or expressing our own outlook in ways that others can comprehend. To write is to communicate. And to create, or narrate, a character is to inhabit their world and reveal it to the reader.

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For our 2027 Writing Competition, we’ve chosen the theme In These Shoes. If stories - true or fictional - take their characters from A to B, most of their characters have something on their feet. To follow their stories is to travel in their shoes – whether we walk with them, or as them.

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But the theme is also about identity and experience. The well-known expression ‘if you were in my shoes’ is not about swapping footwear, but a plea for recognition and understanding. And shoes can literally be about identity too. Our footwear changes as we go through life, reflecting fashions, ageing, comfort and the constant shift of circumstance. Someone once named their worst habit as ‘buying shoes for a life I no longer lead.’ Guilty as charged, Imelda…

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Shoes are a statement too: men may have their eyes elsewhere, but women are popularly alleged to judge a man by his shoes before anything else. (There is a truth here, by the way: a 2012 study by The University of Kansas found that “participants accurately judged the age, gender, income, and attachment anxiety of shoe owners based solely on […] pictures [of their shoes]'.) That said, of course, did anyone notice what she had on her feet…

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And there are as many other possibilities as there are styles of footwear: dancing shoes, wellington boots, leather slippers dug out of peat bogs, piles of discarded shoes at a concentration camp, Hemingway’s baby shoes (unworn), jackboots, Doc Mertens, Cinderella’s slippers – and grandma’s too. Left right left right…

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So, lace or buckle up and send us your best poems, short stories or flash fiction on the theme of In These Shoes. Submissions will close on 18 January 2027, and the winning and highly recommended entries will be announced at our Spring Festival 2027 and published in Issue 7 of our MinK anthologies. Get polishing, everybody, and best foot forward…