The HWA and the Dorothy Dunnett Society are delighted to announce the shortlist and winner for the 2021 HWA Dorothy Dunnett Short Story Competition! Six stories were shortlisted and the winner and highly commended entries were selected from these. Winner His Mother’s Quilt by Naomi Kelsey A gothic gem. A woman trapped in bed fights the […]
The HWA Dorothy Dunnett Short Story Competition 2021 longlist
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 HWA Dorothy Dunnett Short Story Competition 2021 shortlist and winner
The HWA and the Dorothy Dunnett Society are delighted to announce the shortlist and winner for the 2021 HWA Dorothy Dunnett Short Story Competition! Six stories were shortlisted and the winner and highly commended entries were selected from these. Winner His Mother’s Quilt by Naomi Kelsey A gothic gem. A woman trapped in bed fights the […]
HWA Crown Awards 2021: the longlists
We’re delighted to announce the HWA Crown Awards longlists for 2021: 36 books celebrating the best in historical writing, fiction and non-fiction, of 2020-2021. There are three awards categories: HWA Gold Crown, HWA Non-fiction Crown, and HWA Debut Crown. The books longlisted for the HWA Crown Awards for 2021 are: Gold Crown Award 2021 longlist […]
The Race by Alice Fowler (the 2020 HWA Dorothy Dunnett Short Story winner)
We’re delighted to publish The Race by Alice Fowler, the winner of the Historical Writers’ Association Dorothy Dunnett Short Story Prize for 2020. The judges praised the “sheer brilliance” of the premise and her “mastery” in “building atmosphere that tracks with the story’s mounting tension”. We hope you enjoy it, too. And the 2021 HWA/DD […]
Alice Fowler wins the 2020 HWA Dorothy Dunnett Short Story Competition
The Historical Writers’ Association and the Dorothy Dunnett Society are delighted to announce that the winner of the 2020 HWA Dorothy Dunnett Short Story Competition is Alice Fowler for The Race. The HWA/DDS Short Story Competition 2020 winner and highly commended entries are: The winner The Race by Alice Fowler The Race had us rooting […]
The 2020 HWA Dorothy Dunnett Short Story Competition shortlist
We’re delighted to announce the shortlist for the 2020 HWA Dorothy Dunnett Society Competition for an unpublished short story. The HWA/DDS Shortlist 2020 Lakshmi Will Return by Padmini B Sankar A powerful story of loss and yearning, war and division. Moving, thought-provoking and evocative. Mavourneen by Annie Friedlein The muse of artist James Tissot gains […]
How I won an award and stopped being an unpublished novelist
Maggie Richell-Davies is the winner of the first HWA/Sharpe Books Unpublished Novel Award. She tells Historia about her now-published novel, The Servant, and her journey to publication by Sharpe Books: “Be persistent,” she advises. “But above all find competitions that put your story under the nose of someone who loves the past.” There was no […]






