Our anthology writers – part 3

 Sara Gowen has been writing for a number of years in a range of fictional forms, including two unpublished novels. She has recently started to write creative non-fiction as a way of exploring the power of fiction but within a political and social world. Sara uses this to explore issues of social justice whilst at the same time letting her imagination flow. Sara is part of a women’s writing group and, through their encouragement, this is her first published piece of creative nonfiction. Sara works full time managing a charity which supports young carers, lives with her partner and is adjusting to the next stage of her two daughters’ lives, and the time and space it gives her to explore her writing. Her non-fiction piece Wedad  will feature in Words And Women: Four.

Anna Metcalfe is a writer of literary fiction. Her first book, Blind Water Pass, was published by John Murray in 2016 in her short stories have appeared in Lighthouse Journal, Tender and The Warwick Review among other places. In 2014, she became the youngest ever shortlistee of the Sunday Times Short Story Award and was anthologised in The Best British Short Stories. She teaches English Literature at the University of East Anglia and Creative Writing for The Public House. Her short story A Punch Up At The Wedding  will appear in Words And Women: Four.

Helen Morris was born and grew up in Edinburgh, her first short story made it to the final of the Scottish Arts Club Short Story Competition. There's a Wee Bomb Upstairs is her second short story -- unless of course you count Thomas the Cat in the school magazine when she was eight. She is currently working on a novel. At the time of writing, no cats are featured but there may just be the odd bomb . . .  Helen’s story There’s A Wee Bomb Upstairs  will appear in Words And Women: Four.

 

Shiona Morton is Scottish drama teacher who turned to playwriting in her forties. Her first play Baby Bank was produced at The Everyman Theatre in Cheltenham in 2004. Since then her plays have been produced by theatre companies throughout the south-west. At the Hop was published in Three Plays for Rural Audiences. Five Things, a play for young people, has just been published in Kaleider’s Book of Ancient Sunlight. Shiona’s first foray into story writing, The Boy In The Bivouac, will be published in Words And Women: Four.

Nasrin Parvaz became a civil rights activist when the Islamic regime took power in 1979. She was arrested in 1982, tortured and spent eight years in prison. In 1993, she fled to England. Nasrin’s prison memoir was published in Farsi in 2002, and in Italian in 2006. A novel, Temptation, based on the true stories of some male prisoners who survived the 1988 massacre of Iranian prisoners was published in Farsi in 2008. Nasrin’s writings appeared in Over Land, Over Sea, Poems for those seeking refuge, published by Five Leaves, in 2015, Exiled Writers Ink, Modern Poetry in Translation and Live Encounters Magazine. Since 2005, together with poet Hubert Moore, Nasrin has translated poems, prohibited in Iran, from Farsi into English. They appear in the Modern Poetry in Translation series.   Nasrin’s short stories have won the Women’s World Award, been longlisted for the Bristol Short Story Prize and shortlisted for the Asham Award. Her short story The Time of Assassinations will appear in Words And Women: Four.