Get Gone - 2nd Prize

I'm delighted that my flash story, 'Get Gone', is 2nd prize-winner in Reflex Fiction's Spring 2020 flash contest! Here's a snippet:

Get gone, girl, she snarls and the girl, who never knows what she might be getting, goes. Galloping across roads, the girl feels herself small, feels herself dissolving. Giant clouds at the level of her shoulders try to make her laugh but the girl is not amused. Get gone, she herself says to the clouds, and to the snails that line the way, watching. Girls and snails never mix, this she knew from early on. 

Gathered in to herself later, after a day or week...

You can read the whole story here. 

How High Did She Fly - new pamphlet!

My brand new pamphlet, How High Did She Fly, joint winner of the 2019 Live Canon Poetry Pamphlet Competition, is now available! It contains 24 poems: half are inspired by Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, a play which had a powerful effect on me at 16; 30 years later, I decided to take another look and respond to some of its themes: women, voices, silence, love, sex and flight. Woven in between these are poems written at different times which are, I hope, create a conversation through and across the book. You can read two of the poems below, if you buy a copy from me before Jan 1st I will donate £1 from each sale to Samaritans

How High Did She Fly

UK £8.00 GBP Rest of World £9.50 GBP

I'm also offering a discounted bundle of How High Did She Fly + Terms and Conditions - with £1 donated to Samaritans from every purchase before Jan 1st.

How High Did She Fly + Terms and Conditions Discount Bundle

UK £15.00 GBP Rest of World £17.50 GBP

Live Canon Poetry Pamphlet Comp win!

Some very delightful news indeed - I am one of four winners of Live Canon's inaugural poetry pamphlet competition! My pamphlet is called How High Did She Fly, the title is a quote from Arthur Miller's The Crucible, a play that I saw when I was a teenager which had a huge impact on me. Half the poems in the pamphlet are inspired by the women in The Crucible and riff on the themes of women, women's voices, magic... and flying! Congrats to my fellow winners, Katie Griffiths, Miranda Peake and Robin Houghton, our pamphlets will be published some time in November, and there will be a launch party, so stay tuned!

Making choices - Bare Fiction & Smokelong

I'm thrilled that the winners of the Bare Fiction short story competition - which I co-judged with Rachel Tresize - have now been announced, congrats to:

 

1st Prize (£500):

David McGrath, Ger Sheen and the Satanists (UK)

 

2nd Prize (£200):

Allie Rogers, Trout Quintet (UK)

 

3rd Prize (£100):

Anne Corlett, The Clay Baby (UK)

 

Highly Commended x 2 (£25):

Roy Marshall, Late (UK) chosen by Tania Hershman
Jenni Lawson, The Present (UK) chosen by Rachel Trezise

 

Shortlisted (in no particular order):

Paul Nicholas, The Clock (UK)
Annalisa Crawford, 133 Steps (UK)
Frances Gapper, Broken Thing (UK)
Tamara Jones, Dead Daffodils (UK)
Joanna Walsh, Enzo Ponza (UK)
Hannah Gildea, And Still the Sea is Salt (Portland, OR)
Jack Cooke, Still Life (UK)
Penny Simpson, Winter Solstice (UK)
Melanie Whipman, Dissolving (UK)
Paddy Doherty, The Lonely Gene (Spain)
Rachel Cather, Life of a Wasp (Belgium)

If you're interested in how the process worked, you can read our judges' reports here >> 

Also, I've now picked the flash story that will be published in Smokelong Quarterly under my guest editorship and the author of the story has been informed - there were over 100 submissions, thank you to all those of you who sent your work! I'll let you know when the story is published, I hope you'll like it as much as I do!

And the winner is...

Picked randomly out of the hat, the winner of a copy of Writing Short Stories: A Writers & Artists Companion is Tracey Upchurch! Congratulations, Tracey... and commiserations everyone else, but thank you so much for sharing about what and who gives you permission, and the book is available for purchase at the usual outlets, such as Foyles, Waterstones and the Book Depository. Happy New Year of Writing! 

Genomics and a Book Winner

I've written a blog over at the Genomics Network' blog, Genotype, about my recent 2 week fellowship in Edinburgh, here's a snippet:

I had a fascinating two weeks at the beginning of April as a Bright Ideas fellow at the Genomics Forum in Edinburgh, which coincided with the Edinburgh International Science Festival. I could tell you it wasn't what I expected, but to be honest, I had no idea what to expect! On the day I arrived, I was shown my own office space, which was a first for me, a quiet room I could use to write in. And then I was swiftly invited to a conference that afternoon – organised by Gengage and supported by the Forum - on Sudden Cardiac Death in the Young.

It was a very interesting event...

Read the rest here >>>

And the winner of a copy of Jen Campbell's book, Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshop is... Dan Purdue! Congrats, Dan!