Recent graduate Frank Burton celebrated the first week of Spring by making his bow on Radio 4, which broadcast his short story, ‘The World’.

Read by ‘Emmerdale’ star Karl Davies, ‘The World’ is about a man who wakes up one day to discover that he can see and hear everything that is happening in the world.

Frank’s story was featured on the ‘Afternoon Reading’, which specialises in short stories or abridged books, often by writers who are new to radio.

Meanwhile, current MA student Juliet West has notched up a double whammy in a competition organised by ‘The New Writer’, receiving confirmation that a poem and a short story were Highly Commended. Both will be published in a future edition.

The poem, ‘One in the Oven’, came from a writing exercise set by Juliet’s tutor, Alison MacLeod, during the Metaphor and the Imagination module. The short story, ‘Baby Alan’, was from a writing exercise led by Alison’s colleague Stephen Mollett during the Sources and Transformations module.

Juliet made it a hat-trick of success by going on to win first prize in the West Sussex section of the Slipstream Poets’ annual competition. Her poem, ‘The Churchyard at Heptonstall’, was written after a poetry workshop run by Stephanie Norgate (pictured), who coordinates the University’s MA Programme.

“I'm still struggling to believe I’ve won a poetry competition,” said Juliet, who is a former local newspaper journalist. “Although I’ve always enjoyed reading poetry, I didn’t see myself as someone who could write a ‘real’ poem.

“But thanks to the encouragement of the tutors on the Creative Writing MA - especially a series of poetry workshops led by Stephanie Norgate - I felt brave enough to experiment in this genre.”

Juliet’s classmate David Hailwood is celebrating a different kind of publishing success. He is the author of the new one-page comic strip, ‘Hoaxers’, which appears in ‘Toxic’ comic, issue 137 (the one with Monsters Versus Aliens on the cover).

There is an opportunity for readers to vote online for their favourite comic strip in the comic. And the strip with the most votes might go on to get a regular series. If you want to support Dave, a former Chichester undergraduate who now works in the University library, the web address for voting is www.toxicmag.co.uk/vote.

Finally, Issie Croucher (pen name Isabel Ashdown) has secured a literary agent for her novel ‘Glasshopper’, which she started writing while studying as an undergraduate in the English Department.

The book has been accepted by an agency based in Brighton, who will now search for a publisher in London.

A delighted Issie explained: “I sent them the first 30 pages and a synopsis. The next day they asked for the whole manuscript. And after the weekend they asked to meet me. We met, I liked them, they loved the book, and after I'd checked them out we signed up . . . and I had an agent!

“Would you believe it, within a fortnight two of the London agencies came forward expressing an interest, and I was in the nice position of being able to say, "Thanks - but I'm already signed up!" “Going with a smaller agent feels like the right decision for me, as I think they’ll be able to dedicate a bit more time to me and my work as a new writer.

“So, now I really do have to exercise a little patience as we try to find the right publishing home for my novel. I’ll be completing my MA in December 2009, by which time I should be well into my second novel . . . which is just the distraction I need!”