We’re pleased to announce the winners of the March WWWC: Susan Hobson and Kristin Murdock. We couldn’t decide between their entries, so this March 2025’s WWWC is a jointly awarded prize. Read Susan’s entry below, and find Kristin’s here.

Susan’s ‘Festival Madness’ is an immersive ride through the waves of a crowded festival.

Festival Madness

Bursts of colour explode in the street before me. Bodies, all around, pressing, gyrating, cresting the rolling waves of sound. Flung voices and glitter-punched laughter float across the heavy heartbeat of music. And the smell – of alcohol and hazy cigarettes, yes, but mainly the smell of joy, of excitement, of energy let off the leash.

I stand alone, wondering why I have come here, so far from my ‘real’ life. No part of me belongs here.

The parade pounds past, pulsating. Somehow the heartbeat has become mine. Smiles stick to me, reel me in. I want to reach out, I want to touch the diamante headdress reaching up to grab at the night sky. I want to press my lips against the bravery of costume, lay my fingers on the revealing disguise. This is real, the dancing arms gesticulate in a language older than speech. Follow me, follow me, the feet pattern out in a mad tattoo, and my blood hums out an answer. But do I – could I ever – belong here?

My hands twitch, wanting to smoke, to drink, to eat, to hug, to hold, to skim a stranger’s arm as though I had permission to do so. I find my feet have started to tap. My arms lift. We can be one. The promise settles on my skin. What I was yesterday falls away. The world has shrunk to a Sydney street. The world has erupted, re-formed, become something new and extraordinary. I belong to this tribe. Not by rites or initiation but because I have chosen it, discovered a will to be free.

Tonight, I have submitted to the crowd. I have entered a state of festival madness and allowed myself to soar. There is no tomorrow.

This is the second time that Susan has won the WWWC.
Read her first winning entry, ‘One Long, Lost Weekend’, here.