The Northern Short Story Festival Academy is delighted to announce that it will be supporting a further six short story writers from Yorkshire in 2021. These writers will join the 12 who were selected in 2018 when The Northern Short Story Festival Academy was launched.
The Northern Short Story Festival Academy is a development programme aimed at helping short story writers in Yorkshire take their writing to the next level. The scheme promotes writing excellence. Participants will join a monthly workshop critique group led by writer Anna Chilvers where they will read and critique each others’ stories.
Director of the Northern Short Festival, Fiona Gell said, “We are delighted to open our Academy doors to a further 6 Yorkshire writers. We had dozens of very good applications for our small number of places which really shows just how much writing talent there is in our region. We hope to help our selected writers develop critically and professionally and become better at their craft. We are very grateful to Arts@Leeds and Leeds City Council and our sponsors The Walter Swan Trust for their continued support without which we, as a voluntary organisation, would not exist to run schemes such as the Academy.”
Niccola Swan, Chair of the Walter Swan Trust said, “When we set up the Walter Swan Trust in my husband’s memory, this was exactly the sort of project we wanted to support. It’s really exciting to see such an interesting group of writers come together, and we hope they will have a wonderful experience under the very capable guidance of Anna Chilvers.”
The Northern Short Story Festival Academy is part of The Northern Short Story Festival and Leeds Big Bookend, and is supported by Arts@Leeds and Leeds City Council and the Walter Swan Trust.
The six writers for 2021 are:
LMA Bauman-Milner
LMA Bauman-Milner is a certified member of the Librarian Order, and author of the short story anthology, Dark Doors. Occasionally, she hunts down demons and carves stories from their flesh; sometimes, the demons carve stories into hers.
Glenis Burgess
Glenis Burgess has had a varied career ranging from working in professional theatre to a local authority. She has managed events at Ilkley Literature Festival and volunteered at the Otley Courthouse Arts Centre. She started writing about 10 years ago and is a member of Leeds Writers’ Circle and Courthouse Writers.
Monica Dickson
Monica Dickson writes short fiction. Her work has appeared online, on air and in print journals and anthologies. She has been longlisted and shortlisted in various competitions and won the Northern Short Story Festival Flash Fiction Slam.
S.K. Perry
S.K.Perry’s debut novel Let Me Be Like Water was longlisted for the Ondaatje Prize and selected as the City Reads pick for 2019. Sarah was the winner of last year’s Berlin Writing Prize, and was commissioned to write The Treehouse for BBC Radio 4’s Short Works series.
Rob Schofield
Rob Schofield has recently completed work on a collection of short stories and is working on his second novel. His stories have been highly commended by the judges of the Manchester Fiction Prize (2018), long listed for the Exeter Short Story and Retreat West Short Story Prizes and shortlisted for the Exeter Story Prize. In October 2019, The Blessed English Martyrs, Rob’s unpublished debut novel was shortlisted for the Adventures in Fiction New Voices prize.
Hannah Walton-Hughes
Hannah Walton-Hughes has won prizes in events such as the York Literature Festival Creative Writing Competition and has also read her series of self-written short story fairy-tale parodies on BBC Radio York. She has a place to study ‘English with Creative Writing’ at the University of Nottingham next September.
Image: left to right: LMA Bauman-Milner, Monica Dickson, Hannah Walton-Hughes, Glenis Burgess, Rob Schofield, S.K. Perry
