Random House have announced the winners of  their Unheard Voices competition, run in association with Black History Month website. The joint winners are:

GRACE QUASNAH, whose moving poem, Visit to Elmina, was inspired by a recent journey to Ghana - including a visit to Elmina Castle: an important site  in the history of slavery.

And DANIEL FRANCIS for his poem, A Day in the Life, which cleverly compares and contrasts two separate viewpoints of the transportation of slaves.

Unheard Voices is an anthology of both stories and poems on the theme of slavery. Edited by Malorie Blackman, it will be published in March 2007 to tie in witht he commemoration of the bicentennary of the 1807 Aboloition of the Slave Trade Act.

The book will include an original story by Malorie and work from the following authors and poets: John Agard, Sandra Agard, James Berry, Valerie Boom, Alex Haley, Catherine johnson, Grace Nichols, Gary Paulsen and Benjamin Zephaniah. It will also include extracts from slave narratives by Frederick Douglass, Olaudah Equiano, Harriet Jaobs and Mary Prince.