Elena Barham, based in Sheffield, is a writer of prose, poetry and plays for stage and screen. She is the winner of the 2022 BBC and Cambridge University Young Writers’ Award with her short story Little Acorns (adapted to radio), the 2021 Ilkley Literature Festival Young People’s Poetry Prize and the 2023 Off the Shelf Literary Festival’s Holocaust Memorial writing competition. Her first commission was recently published in the Northern Dreaming anthology curated by the British Library and Leeds 2023.

Elena’s dramatic monologue Cordelia was in the top six shortlist for the Coram Shakespeare Schools Foundation’s What You Will 2023 competition. Her prose has also been highly commended in both the Writing East Midlands 2019 Solstice Prize and the Julia and Martin Wilson Short Story Prize 2021 and she was also a runner-up in the Lewis Carroll Society’s 2021 writing competition. 

In 2022 Elena was selected to be part of Apples and Snakes Writing Room and in 2023 she was selected to take part in the National Theatre’s Writing for Theatre programme. 

She is primarily a writer of prose – literary and/or historical fiction especially – and whilst she loves short stories her dream has always been to be a novelist. She has recently written her first film screenplay.Elena is also an arts, culture and screen critic for the University of Sheffield’s student newspaper Forge Press and a board member of the National Portfolio Organisation Steering Group for Barnsley Libraries.

You can currently purchase Elena’s Writing East Midlands commended short story Remember That One, Tessa? here or Lewis Carroll Society’s 2021 runner-up short story The Tent in the Trees here.

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Recent work:

Little Acorns radio dramatization by the BBC

Only the Oaks reading filmed for Apples and Snakes showcase

Audio recording of Northern Dreaming short story Rosa and George