Exeter Writers

Tracey Glasspool Elizabeth Ducie Exeter Writers members, Tracey Glasspool and Elizabeth Ducie are delighted to have both won prizes in the 2015 Writers Reign Short Story Competition.

A group of writers prepares to boldly go... What do writers do all day? When they're not writing, they're imagining, and sometimes they go on outings to fascinating places, which is what a group of Exeter Writers did yesterday.

OBITUARY It is with great sadness that I record the death of my husband, Ray Girvan, whom many of you have known for some time. Ray and I joined Exeter Writers in about 1998, but he soon decided that, as a technical rather than a literary writer, the group wasn’t really for him and left. He remained a presence in the group, however, coming to social occasions and managing the website, which he did for several years until he became too ill to continue.

Congratulations to Ceri Lowe-Petraske who has won this year's competition with her wonderful story The Parrots of Peckham Rye. You can see the full results, including shortlisted and longlisted entries, and read the winning stories, by clicking here .

The Parrots of Peckham  by Ceri Lowe-Petraske ‘It’s dislocated,’ says the doctor and gives one of those polite closed coughs. Mama watches, her mouth open as it is usually given to being, gawping at the whiteness of the counter and the whiteness of the thin medical bed cover and, most of all, the whiteness of the doctor. She yanks up my shorts so my buttocks don’t show.

Return to Budapest  by J D Hellsinger It was too late to go back inside so he stayed where he was, not moving. She came tapping her way up the stairs.  Maybe she’d go on past. But when she reached the landing she stopped to catch her breath. She directed her milky gaze at him.

Massive Stone Lions  by Lisa McDonald And then, eighteen months ago, my dad died. He was only sixty. It was a bit of a shock to us despite the ciggies and his stress from work. I don’t know why people are so horrible to traffic wardens. Mam cried so hard she broke the blood vessels in her eyes. Dr Griffiths had to come round three times in the first week.