‘Circling the Chicken’ by UEA alumnus Vijay Khurana has been awarded second prize in the Cúirt New Writing Prize, which is part of Galway’s Cúirt International Festival of Literature and was this year judged by Colin Barrett. Vijay (pictured) graduated in 2019 from the MFA in Creative Writing at UEA, and has twice been shortlisted for the Galley Beggar Short Story Prize, in 2019 and 2020. He was also shortlisted for the Bath Short Story Award in 2019. His children’s chapter book Regal Beagle was published in 2014. He lives in Berlin and is currently completing a novel.