The Strictly Writing Award - the final

We are in a quiver here at Strictly Writing: it's time to vote for the winning story and dish out the glittering prize of £300.

First, a big thanks to everyone who submitted stories for our award. We've enjoyed reading them all, and the standard has been high. We hope you've enjoyed seeing the shortlisted story here on the last Friday of each month. As more people got to hear about the award we've had a growing pile of entries through our virtual letter box at Strictly HQ. In fact we planned to shortlist 10 stories but in the end we chose 11, to give a chance to the large volume of high quality last-minuters.

The voting process is simple. The winning story will be chosen by a combination of votes from readers of Strictly Writing and votes from the team here. It will be 50% us and 50% you, a method that has since been stolen by a certain TV dance show that also borrowed our name. I can't say anything more about that as our lawyer (you know who) is dealing with this. All you have to do is decide which of our wonderful shortlisted authors most deserves The Strictly Writing Award - 2011, and the delicious £300. We'll also ask the winner to do a guest blog for us to crow about their success, and I'll try to get one of the judges to write a post about the experience of judging and any patterns in the themes or styles of stories we received.

Once you've chosen which story to vote for, simply email us at strictlywriting@btinternet.com with "Vote for" plus the number of the story, in the subject line of your email, as in: Vote for story 1.

Only one vote each!

To help you decide, there is a link to each story below, with the number of the story for voting.

Story 1. A Time for Grief by Jennifer Jensen

Story 2. Firstborn by Celia Andrew

Story 3. Hex Love by Phil Latham

Story 4. In the Attic by M Wilkinson

Story 5. Coming home by Csilla Toldy

Story 6. My Burglar by Carys Bray

Story 7. Coalescence by Julia Dalby

Story 8. You Can See France From Here by Kay Seeley

Story 9. A Little Bit of Soul by Gavin Wilson

Story 10. The Possibilities of Scalding Geysers by Yvonne Jackson

Story 11. Too Many Kittens by Uta Coutts

We hope you enjoy reading the stories and we look forward to announcing the winner. Voting will stay open until 30 April. Good luck to all our finalists!