Teaching our courses online, as we have throughout 2021, comes with a particularly great luxury: the chance to read new writing by everybody in the group. And we have been really spoiled by another year of stunning stories, poems, hybrid pieces, flash, nonfiction and memoir. It’s not just a pleasure: it’s also heartening, to see so much talent, and to see people sharing their words. We hope the other writers on our courses enjoy reading each other’s work as much as we do!
So, it is not a surprise to find that writers we’ve met through courses go on to publish, win prizes, sign with agents, join schemes, or take other great steps forward – but it is always worth celebrating. Below are some of the writers we’ve been in touch with and their success stories of 2021. Congratulations to all of you! And to everyone who has joined a course, or written to us, or crossed our paths this year in writing land, we will be cheering you all on into 2022 and beyond. Thank you all.
Good writing news of 2021:
Sophie Powell and Alex Petropoulos both have short stories appearing in Sunburnt Saints, an anthology of climate fiction from Seventy2one. The book is available for pre-order here.
Iain Rowan’s story ‘Lob’, first written on a LLL course, is in the next Gramarye issue 20. His story ‘Shell’, also produced on the course, is published (and illustrated) in new magazine The Amphibian Lit. And a further LLL-inspired story, ‘The Beast’s Man’, is published in Ellipsis. Iain has also signed with David Headley literary agency to represent his novel!
Andrew Kauffmann was a winner of Scribe UK and Spread the Word competition for works of narrative non-fiction, having submitted his work following a LLL memoir course. Andrew will be teaching our Live Online session Tender and Ferocious: Writing our Many Queer Stories in February 2022.
Chloe Timms’s selkie-inspired debut novel The Seawomen will be published by Hodder Studio in June 2022.
Phil Charter latest collection The Fisherwoman and Other Stories was published in November and won the Loft books Short Story Award.
Paula Lennon signed a three-book deal with Joffe Books, and her crime trilogy set in Jamaica will be published in February 2022. She is now working on an eighteenth-century historical fantasy set in Bristol and Jamaica, with her agent Anne Perry of The Ki Agency.
Hanne Larsson has had several pieces published, spent six months on a development programme with Dahlia Books, and was shortlisted in Retreat West’s flash fiction competition.
Jay Prosser received an honourable mention in both the Curtis Johnson Prize and the Spread the Word prize for short memoir writing, and is now seeking an agent!
Barbara Wheatley’s book review of Victoria Chang’s memoir Dear Memory appeared in Litro magazine.
Harriet Springbett completed her debut trilogy, the Tree Magic series, published by Impress Books.
Sadie Nott won a London Writers Award and completed their development programme. She wrote a memoir, the opening of which was shortlisted for the First Pages Prize.
Maggie Sawkins’s new collection The House where Courage Lives will be published by Waterloo Press in 2022. The eponymous prose poem was inspired by a LLL course!
Helen Harjak’s story ‘I’m Not a Mouse and She’s Not a Cat’, inspired by a LLL course, was published in Fudoki Magazine.
Pauline Masurel’s ‘I Found Myself Lost’, inspired by a LLL course, won the Gloucestershire Writers Network prose prize.
Ali McGrane’s novella-in-flash, The Listening Project, was shortlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Award, and published by Ad Hoc Fiction in November.