Indian summer at Charleston


Charleston was bathed in late summer sun for the Asham prize giving and book launch in September.

Held during the annual short story festival - Small Wonder - the event was a chance for the twelve winning writers to meet the judges of this year’s Asham Award and to meet each other - many of whom had come from the far corners of the UK to be present.

Kate Pullinger, who edits the Asham anthology, and novelist Sarah Waters, whose own ghost story The Little Stranger, inspired the title of the anthology, spoke about each of the twelve stories and the high standard of the entries.

The prize giving was followed by a sell-out festival event to mark the launch of the anthology. Waters and contributors Naomi Alderman and Kate Clanchy discussed the different responses to the Gothic theme and Alderman and Clanchy read from their own ghost stories. 

Linda McVeigh (pictured right receiving her winning cheque from Asham administrator Carole Buchan) started writing in 2005.  She won the Small Wonder Short Story Festival slam in 2007, and achieved a double whammy by winning it again this year, along with the Asham Award.  In 2010 she was awarded first prize in the Creative Tourist Rainy City short story competition. She is currently writing a novel. All Over the Place is her first published story.

Read All Over the Place

Kate Morrison read English Literature at New Hall College, Cambridge, (where there are, sadly, no haunted towers) and lives in Brighton.  She has previously worked as a journalist, tutor, press officer and,  briefly, as an elf in Santa's grotto.  She is writing a novel set in sixteenth-century London.  Her favourite ghost stories are The Turn of the Screw by Henry James and O Whistle and I'll Come to you, My Lad by M.R.James.

Read Sam Brown

Fiona Law (right, reading from her winning story) lives outside London with her husband and children and worked for years trying different genres and markets as a writer.  She began to get published after turning to fantasy fiction about Wiccan and pagan-related subjects and the paranormal.  She has a passion for ancient history, mythology, folklore and all things Celtic.  Her love of Britain's heritage and its picturesque landscapes are reflected in her stories.  She is currently working on witchy stories for women.

Read The Traveller

	Photos: Axel Hesslenberg

 

   

Gabriela Blandy, who received a special mention for her story The Courting,a receives her copy of the Asham anthology

Read The Courting

 

 

NEWS FROM ASHAM WRITERS

Ghostly goings-on on line

Fiona Law, who came third in this year’s Asham Award, is obviously hooked on the paranormal. She has had her novel - Oswin’s Project - accepted by Eternal Press.

Oswin’s Project is a comedy centred around a ghost hunt. It will be launched on-line on January 11 next year and will be available as an Ebook and in print on demand, sold through Eternal Press and on websites, including Amazon.

Gifted pupil Oswin boards with his cousins in a spooky Edwardian house. His favourite cousin, Gemma, thinks the house may be haunted but her loud-mouthed older sister Beryl insists there is no such thing as ghosts. Oswin decides to prove Beryl wrong and sets out to create a series of gadgets enabling Gemma to record her ghostly experiences. As a result, Gemma and Oswin discover there is more than one type of ghostly entity in the house - some nastier than others.