We’re delighted to announce the longlist for the 2021 Historical Writers’ Association Dorothy Dunnett Society Short Story Competition. This impressive list shows “not just talent, but passion and sensitivity and an ability to bring the past and its people to life in rich and vivid prose”.
The HWA Dorothy Dunnett Short Story Competition 2021 longlist:
The Sister Time Forgot by Rachel Blackmore
Witch Words by Valerie Bowes
Riddle Me a Riddle: Who Am I? by Liz Brown
Aftermath by Mary Byrne
The Fortune Teller by Helen Cannam
Play Your Parts with Calmness and Courage by John Irving Clarke
Douce Dame Jolie by Jean Cooper Moran
A Country Without King by Raluca David
One Last Time by Roger Davison
The Fallen Woman by Sue Dawes
Margarita by Rachel Eirinberg
Dowesmiset’s Cat by Cathy Farnworth
Painting The Light by Mary Ellen Fox
The Flight from Dundrennan by Clare Hawkins
The Godless Florin by Jocelyn Kaye
Guard of Honour by Liz Kershaw
His Mother’s Quilt by Naomi Kelsey
Typhoid Mary, 1964 by Catherine Ogston
The Crossroads by Geoffrey Peter
The Wisdom of Virgins by Mo Ryan
Trying to Transcend by Chrissy Sturt
The Breast Band Murder by Norman Thomson
Twelve Years to Grow Before Dark by Hazel Turner
Her Own Kind by Fiona Whyte
Asylum by Vanessa Winn
Congratulations to all the longlisted authors!
“We at the HWA and Dorothy Dunnett Society were delighted with the response to the competition again this year, and very impressed by the range and quality of the submissions. We are very grateful to all the writers who sent us their stories and thank them for carrying us through time and around the world with their words.
“All the writers longlisted here show not just talent, but passion and sensitivity and an ability to bring the past and its people to life in rich and vivid prose,” HWA Chair Imogen Robertson says.
Huge thanks are owed to our first round judges: Karen Alvey, Julia Hart, Kate Jewell, Jean Lang, Barbara Milner, Betty Moxon, Matthew Plampin, Ellen Rawson, Annie Whitehead and Sally Zigmond.
The shortlisted stories, which will be published as an anthology at the end of this year, will be announced on the HWA website on 1 October, 2021. We’ll announce the winner and the two highly commended stories at the same time.
All the longlisted authors are invited to the HWA awards ceremony in November 2021 if it goes ahead; at the moment we’re hoping we can all meet in person.
