The Writers

THE WEST COUNTRY WRITERS

Gail Aldwin
Gail Aldwin lives in Dorset and enjoys writing short stories and flash fiction as relief from the slog of completing a novel. Her work appears in on-line publications including Paragraph Planet, Five Stop Story, Ink Sweat and Tears and CafeLit. Three print anthologies coming to press in 2012 contain examples of her writing. Gail has a regular column in What the Dickens? Magazine that answers writers’ questions. She also blogs about all things literary at:
http://gailaldwin.wordpress.com

Rebecca Alexander
Rebecca Alexander is a fiction writer and poet living in North Devon. She left a career as a psychologist, listening to people’s extraordinary stories, to write her own. Her first novel, Borrowed Time, was a runner up in the Mslexia competition, and attracted a literary agent. She blogs at
http://witchwayblogspotcom.blogspot.co.uk/

Hazel Bagley
Hazel Bagley is from North Wiltshire and has been a member of a local writing group for seven years. She has entered short story competitions several times but this is the first time she’s tried flash fiction. She works as a tour guide in Bath.

Jennifer Bell
Jennifer Bell lives in a little ramshackle cabin in North Dorset. Her stories have appeared in print and online including Kasma SF, The Pygmy Giant, Dogmatika and others. Her website is at www.bellstories.co.uk

Richard Bond
Richard Bond was born, lives and will probably die in Bristol, although he has plans before then. He started writing short stories and flash fiction about two years ago when he realised it was more rewarding than yet more opening chapters of unfinished novels. Richard was a runner up in the Fish Flash Fiction prize 2011 and was published in the Fish Anthology

Margaret Bradshaw
Margaret Bradshaw lives in S Devon; has a love/hate relationship with creative writing; has self-published one poetry pamphlet; and enjoys canoeing.

Rosalind Browne
Rosalind Browne runs an old fashioned Hardware shop (
http://robertsottery.com/
 ) based in East Devon.
She has been writing for, oooh… about five minutes having discovered Flash Fiction via her friend and business partner Alastair Keen (also featured in this list) she hopes she hasn’t trodden on his toes!
She believes that old wine is better than young and hopes that other people feel the same.

Joanna Campbell
Joanna Campbell of Gloucestershire writes short stories all day at home in the Cotswolds, with three cats and occasional bowls of cereal for company.She has been published in various magazines and anthologies. In 2010 and 2012 she was shortlisted for both the Fish and the Bridport Short Story Prizes. In 2010 she was shortlisted for the Bristol Short Story Prize. She is currently writing a novel as well as trying to be her husband’s company secretary.
She hopes she is a better writer than she is a secretary, as does her husband.

Rachel Carter
Rachel from North Devon writes short stories and flash fiction (some of which are published with Ether Books), and takes part in the online Friday Flash community. She has studied 13 Open University modules, and has a diploma in literature and creative writing. Whilst putting together this anthology she is supposed to be completing an honours degree and her husband’s VAT return.
http://rachelcarter.me/

James Coates
James Coates lives in Bournemouth, Dorset. He has been writing for about a year. One of his stories was recently featured in American flash fiction magazine ‘Stanley the Whale’.

Josephine Corcoran
Josephine Corcoran, who currently lives in Trowbridge, West Wiltshire, returned to writing in 2010 after a ten year gap spent raising two fantastic children. Her work is published, broadcast (on BBC R4) and performed. Read more about her on
http://josephinecorcoran.wordpress.com
 or follow her on Twitter @CorkyCorks

Melanie Doherty
Melanie Doherty lives in South Gloucestershire. She has had the itch to write from a very early age. In past years, several of her short stories for children were published in magazines – but more recent times allowed very little space for her inner storyteller. For her, this chance to attempt a piece of flash fiction was a timely prompt to let it spread its wings again!
Melanie blogs at
http://bookishnature.wordpress.com/

Gill Garrett
Gill Garrett lives in Cheltenham in Gloucestershire and writes poems and short stories. A lecturer in a previous existence, she now supports care home residents with life story work and creative writing.

Gilly Goldsworthy
Gilly Goldsworthy, from Exeter, completed a Diploma in Creative Writing with the Open University last year. She intends to write fiction and is slowly writing her first novel but indulges her passion for travel writing at lucidgypsy.wordpress.com

Kevlin Henney
Kevlin Henney from Bristol writes shorts and flashes and drabbles of fiction and articles and books on software development. His fiction has appeared online and on tree with Litro, Fiction365, Dr. Hurley’s Snake-oil Cure, The Fabulist, The Liminal, New Scientist and FlashStories.net. He blogs at asemantic.net and tweets as @KevlinHenney.

Tania Hershman
Tania Hershman from Bristol has had flash stories published online and in print and broadcast on Radio 4. Her second book, a collection of 56 very short stories, My Mother Was An Upright Piano: Fictions, is published in May by Tangent Books. www.taniahershman.com

Muriel Higgins
Muriel Higgins is a retired teacher of English as a foreign language and text-book writer. Born and educated in Scotland, she has lived in several countries overseas and moved to Dorset in 2005

Sarah Hilary
Sarah is a Bristol-based award-winning short story scribbler, published in Smokelong Quarterly, the Fish Anthology, and by the Crime Writers’ Association (CWA). In 2011, she won an Honourable Mention in the Tom-Gallon Trust Award. Sarah blogs at www.sarah-crawl-space.blogspot.com. Her agent is Jane Gregory

Claire Huxham
Claire Huxham lives in Weston-super-Mare, North Somerset, and has been writing since 2009; her fiction, non-fiction and poetry can be found in places like Metazen, The Foundling Review, Danse Macabre and The Hollywood News. She lectures in English at a local FE college and is particularly keen on Buffy, cats, sushi and cheese. She blogs here: we’re gonna need a bigger boat

Mandy James
Mandy James from Bristol has been writing for as long as she can remember. She has short stories in many anthologies and on Ether Books. Her novel, Righteous Expsoure was released by Crooked Cat Publishing
http://crookedcatpublishing.com/our-books/righteous-exposure-by-a-k-james
 in February of 2012.
http://mandykjameswrites.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/when-wind-is-in-west.html

Alastair Keen
Alastair Keen is a former soldier, ex-RSPCA Inspector and was for a while Director of Operations of the Irish SPCA; amongst other things. He is now the part owner of a hardware store (think fork ‘andles), Open University Student, chicken whisperer and writer. He is a featured writer on flash fiction world .com and National Flash Fiction Day. His fiction can be found on Pygmy Giant, flash fiction world.com, The Rusty Nail Nail Mag, Etherbooks, Urban Fantasist.com amongst other places. He is presently pinging his novel ‘Unnecessary Suffering’ to agents and publishers. A future ambition is to train one of his rare breed bantams for military and law enforcement purposes, if only they would pat attention for two minutes…

Calum Kerr
Calum Kerr is a writer, editor, lecturer and Director of National Flash-Fiction Day. He lives in Southampton and teaches at the University of Winchester. His stories have appeared in a number of places including Bugged, Flash: The Internationl Journal of the Short Short Story, Shoestring, The Pygmy Giant, Litro and Apollo’s Lyre. Last year he had 22 flash-fictions featured on Radio 4′s PM and iPM programmes. He has been writing and blogging a flash-fiction every day for a year at flash365.blogspot.com and his self-published pamphlet, 31, is available from http://www.calumkerr.co.uk and on Kindle from Amazon. His new pamphlet, Braking Distance, will be published by Salt at the beginning of May 2012.

Michael Kirby
Michael Kirby is from Chudleigh in Devon and has been writing ‘longish’ short stories for about five years. One of these stories was long-listed for the Fish prize. He is ‘at last’ editing his own ‘twenty odd year old’ Sci Fi novel. This is his first try at Flash fiction.

Henry Kitchen
Henry Kitchen lives North Devon near Holsworthy. He writes short stories as relaxation from voluntary work

Lesley Lees
Lesley Lees from Plymouth, Devon has just started to write flash fiction but has been writing poetry for the last few years.

Iris Lewis
Iris Lewis is a short story writer and poet living in Gloucestershire. After a management career in the education and health care sectors she is now able to devote more time to creative writing. She has only recently started to submit her material for publication. As a new writer she is delighted that she has been successful in both having her poetry and flash fiction accepted for inclusion in anthologies.

Pauline Masurel
Pauline Masurel lives in South Gloucestershire. She is a gardener and writer of short and tiny fictions. Her website is at www.unfurling.net.

Louisa Adjoa Parker
Louisa Adjoa Parker is a poet and black history writer who lives in West Dorset. Her first poetry collection ‘Salt-sweat and Tears’ was published in 2007. Her work has appeared in various anthologies and magazines, including the Forward Prize collection; Wasafiri; Envoi and Ouroboros. She has written books and exhibitions about the presence of African and Caribbean people in Dorset. Louisa first wrote flash fiction as part of a BBC project ‘Made in the South’ in 2009 and has continued writing short stories since then. She is currently researching the presence of African American GIs in Dorset in 1944 as well as working on her second poetry collection and her first novel. Louisa is co-editor of ‘Dorset Voices’ – a collection of local prose, poetry and photography, published this April by Roving Press

Iain Pattison
Iain Pattison from Bristol is a full-time author, creative writing tutor and competition judge. His short stories have been widely published in the UK and the United States and broadcast on BBC Radio 4. His book Cracking The Short Story Market (Writers Bureau Books) is a best seller. www.iainpattison.com

Sam Payne
Sam Payne lives in Plymouth and is a full time mum, part time student and a part time trolley dolly on the great British Railway. She has just completed a Diploma in Creative Writing with the Open University and is now studying for a degree in English Literature.
Sam blogs at
http://chasintheplot.wordpress.com/

Deborah Rickard
Deborah Rickard, from Bristol, has had short stories published in women’s magazines and online. She started writing flash fiction in 2011, has enjoyed various competition successes and has been shortlisted for the 2012 Fish Flash Fiction Award. For her, flash fiction opens the mind to a moment and keeps it open …

John D. Ritchie
John D. Ritchie lives in North-east Wiltshire and has been writing flash Fiction since 2005. He has had stories published in the following anthologies ‘HeavyGlow 2005-2007′, ‘DoorKnobs and Body Paint 2008′ and the ‘Best of Everyday Fiction 2008′. He is frequently found, these days, in Five Minute Fiction.

Diane Simmons
Diane Simmons from Bath started writing just over five years ago when she embarked on an Open University creative writing course. She has not stopped writing since and now has a Diploma in Literature and Creative Writing (with Distinction) from the Open University. She enjoys entering writing competitions and her successes include runner up in the SHE/This Morning short story competition (2009), top ten finalist in Woman and Home’s 2010 competition and 1st, 2nd and 3rd place in The Frome Festival competition for local writers in 2011, 2010 and 2009 respectively. She has recently had a story published in The Yellow Room magazine. This is her first flash fiction success.

Rin Simpson
Rin Simpson is a Bristol-based freelance journalist and creative writer, and founder of The Steady Table writers’ group.

Sarah Snell-Pym
Sarah Snell-Pym a Gloucester based writer loves flash fiction writing ever since she found the Friday Flash hash take on twitter. Her writing varies in length and style ranging from kids poetry to the darkly political. Website
http://www.snell-pym.org.uk/sarah/

Natalia Spencer
Natalia Spencer is a new writer from Bristol and a Creative Writing student at Bathspa University. Four years ago, despite never having used a computer before, she began blogging and this became the impetus for the development of her poetry and prose fiction.

Derek Thompson
Derek Thompson is a writer and humorist living in West Cornwall. He writes fiction and non-fiction, but flash fiction holds a special place in his heart. As the saying goes: “Sometimes less is more.” His blog lives at:
http://www.alongthewritelines.blogspot.com
 and you’re all invited.

Brendan Way
Brendan Way from North Devon has been writing things ever since he learnt how to handle a pen. He has been writing flash fiction, mainly as part of blog team The Flashnificent 7, for considerably less time. His work for them can be found here,
http://flashnificent7.blogspot.co.uk/
, but, if you’re not in the mood for a short story, you can always check out some sarcastic pedantry of his here:
http://thebrendanway.blogspot.co.uk/
.

Martha Williams
Martha Williams lives and writes in Cornwall, on a big, wet rock overlooking the Atlantic. She has a selection of flash and short stories published in print and online, and blogs at
http://marthawilliams.org

Jenny Woodhouse
Jenny Woodhouse retired to Bath where she has been writing seriously since she took an Open University diploma in literature and creative writing in 2007-9. Previously she specialised in papers and policies. Her preferred genre is short stories, which are growing shorter and evolving into flash fiction. She has been shortlisted on a number of occasions and hopes one day to graduate from bridesmaid to publication.