Exeter Writers

 Marta Emmitt is the winner of our Devon prize. How did you feel when you found out that you'd won? I felt incredibly pleased and honoured to be chosen for the Devon prize.   I’m not a “native Devonian” but I’ve been living here for over 10 years, and this felt like a beautiful acknowledgment of my connection with this place. Where did you get the idea for your story? What came first, character or plot? I’ve been fascinated by myths and folklore around shapeshifting for some time, and especially the myth of the Selkie.   I’ve also been trying to write something around grief and loss, and the power of the sea.   Then the main character came to me, so character first! How long have you been writing? Is this your first win? I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember.   This is my first fiction win.   In 2000 I was shortlisted for the Verity Bargate award for emerging playwrights, which was incredibly exciting as that is a very big...

  The Fisherman's Wife  by  Marta Emmitt First time they lay together he cried.  He never did again, but that first time, he cried into the crook of her neck, like a little boy.  “What is it?” she asked him. “It’s me,” he said.   “I’m all wrong.” She stroked his hair.   He looked up at her with his big wide eyes.   “Do you think,” he said, “we’ll have sons?” She laughed then.   “Not too soon, I hope,” she said, “and you can’t choose what you get.” “I never knew my father,” he said, curling back down so his head rested on her belly.   “He was a fisherman, like me.   Left when I was a baby.   All’s I remember is a whiskery face, and a smell of fish.”   He stroked the soft round shape of her, until she shivered.  “I want my sons to know me,” he said. She knew when she got the phone call.   Shouldn’t have let him out on the boat, at his age.   There had...