The last weekend of September is when Fishguard’s ‘On Land’s Edge’ Festival of the Arts takes place.

OLE, as it is known, has grown from strength to strength, and, this year, thanks to a generous grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, it promised to be even bigger and better!

This funding was allocated for a particular theme, relevant to the history of the town – the filming of Moby Dick seventy years ago.

Of course, this had a special relevance to me, as a writer, as I had written a story on this exact theme, which turned out to be one of my most successful, winning the 2019 Chipping Norton Literature Festival prize, and chosen as runner-up in the Society of Authors ALCS Tom-Gallon Literature Award, as well as featuring in ‘Best (British) Short Stories 2020.’

Unfortunately, as I could not commit to the date this year, I was unable to participate in a ‘performer’ capacity. However, I did manage to attend the Literature Sunday talk, featuring two novelists, who have written books featuring a whale stranded on a beach – unusual, but very appropriate for the Festival!

The authors were Elizabeth O’Connor, talking about ‘Whale Fall’, a lyrical novel, set on a fictional Welsh island, and Alex Hubbard, who recently published ‘Storm’, which centres around the lives of students from Aberystwyth University. (As I studied at Aberystwyth many years ago, I was interested to see how things have changed…!)

Both the authors and their books had contrasting styles, as well as subjects, in spite of the common leviathan. The conversation was facilitated by Mike Ponsford, who is very capable in this capacity, and the discussion was informative and lively. Mike very kindly managed to slip in a reference to ‘things found on the mountain’, not because a whale turned up in the Black Mountains, but because of the shared theme of strangers arriving in an alien landscape, leading to change. Many questions were asked by the audience, which is always a good sign of active engagement. There was also a good turnout, which bodes well for future festivals. Thank you to all.

On the day prior to this, I had the pleasure of taking part in an online event – the Leicester Writes Short Story Prize Ceremony – which made the whole weekend rather literary!

As mentioned in my previous post, I was awarded joint third prize in the competition, for my story, ‘Bear’, so I was delighted to attend the ceremony, as it provided an opportunity to ‘meet’ the other winners, as well as Farhana and Mona, the judges.

Most of the longlisted writers were also present, and we all read an extract from our stories, which, as ever, illustrated the variety of the form. Farhana and Mona were kind enough to praise and comment on each work, often explaining the reason for their choice – which is actually a very useful insight for a writer. Mona described ‘Bear’ as the most ‘literary’ story – something I was pleased to hear, as I do tend to call my work ‘literary fiction’ (while having certain issues with the term!) Farhana has always read every single round of the competition and said she had an incredibly difficult decision to pick the winners, and that she was ‘blown away’ by the standard, so we should, therefore, recognise our talent.

The event also celebrated the launch of the Prize Anthology, which is particularly special for Dahlia Books, as it contains every story that has won the Leicester Writes Prize, as well as this year’s longlist.

Farhana spoke of the short story, with regard to the prize, but also in general terms and why it has always been so important to her. She made some interesting comments about female representation in workshops and competitions. Among the 2026 entries, there was a fifty per cent male/female split, yet the longlist included seven women writers, as opposed to three men. She felt this might be due to our work ethic – our commitment and dedication, our ability to keep going.

This was the last Leicester Writes Prize, but Farhana and Dahlia Books are far from ‘done’ with short prose. A new direction, with new opportunities will be announced soon, for which all of us who love short stories are most grateful.

Dahlia books are available here.

Thanks, again, to all involved.