Exeter Writers

 The Longlist for our 2025 Short Story Competition has just been announced. You can find the names of the 31 stories here .

 News from London Book Fair! Jason Mann, of Exeter Writers, was announced as the 2025 winner of the Selfies Adult Fiction Award at the London Book Fair. His Cornish mystery  The Echoing Shore   was described by the judges as a pacy, absorbing story ‘that delivers to the very end’.   It tells the story of Kate Tregillis, the editor of a small, struggling newspaper, who becomes obsessed with solving a longstanding mystery – the loss of the local lifeboat ten years earlier. In exposing the truth, she risks the future of her newspaper and even her life – and learns that the man she loves has his own secrets.   Jason, a shore-based lifeboat volunteer, said: ‘I couldn’t believe it when I heard I’d won. I wanted the story to bring out not only the raw majesty and beauty of Cornwall but also the deprivations that exist in many rural areas and small coastal towns. Cornwall has always been a special place for me. I have swum and surfed there much of my life and, in fact, ...

  The Exeter Writers Short Story Competition 2025 has CLOSED Thank you and good luck to everyone who has entered. We've had a bumper crop this year and will be very busy reading for the next few months. Here is a reminder of our timescales: 1st December 2024: competition opens 28th February 2025: competition closes 2nd May 2025: longlist is announced 19th May 2025: shortlist is announced 6th June 2025: winners are announced

 New Short Story Collection from Angela Wooldridge Welcome to the Merewoods is a collection of 16 Science Fiction and Fantasy short stories. Welcome to the Merewoods... and a few other places that have been brewed up from the imagination of Angela Wooldridge. Meet Skye as, with the dubious help of her familiar, Poggitt, she does her best to convince Granny that she has the makings of a good witch. Up in space an unexpected ally is on hand to foil a bunch of invading aliens. A forest god wakes up several hundred years late to discover that neither humans nor squirrels turned out as planned. How do you adjust to a ghost for a housemate? And what do the tea leaves have in store..? Come and find out... Welcome... However, if your preference is for contemporary stories then you may like to try her other collection, Witches' Knickers . Martha is tidying the hedgerows while she tries to ignore what a mess her life is in. Molly and her sisters are uncovering a family secret. Kelly is begi...

 As we enter the final month of our short story competition, we have some brilliant news from a previous winner to share! Richard Hooton won second prize in 2021 with his story  The Homecoming .  Richard told us: "Since being awarded second place in your short story competition in 2021, I was able to get an agent and a book deal for a novel that will be published on 10 April.  Being placed by Exeter Writers was a huge boost and helped validate, and instil confidence in, my writing." Richard's debut novel  The Margaret Code  will be published on 10 April by Sphere, an imprint of Little Brown. It’s available to pre-order from  Amazon  or any bookshop. The voice-led whodunnit follows eighty-nine-year-old Margaret whose failing memory holds the key to the murder investigation taking place on her street. It will also be published in America by Union Square and Co, and in Germany by DTV.  He is on Facebook, Instagram, X, and Bluesky as @RJHooton. C...

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