New Welsh Women's Crime Anthology - Call for Submissions

 

A New Chapter in Welsh Women’s Crime Writing: 

Call for Submissions of Original Short Fiction 

by Katherine Stansfield

An exciting development is afoot at Welsh publisher Honno, the longest-standing independent women’s press in the UK, and I’m delighted to be able to share the news in this blogpost.

In spring 2022, Honno will publish an anthology of crime fiction, showcasing the talents of new and established women crime writers in Wales today. I’m thrilled to be co-editing the anthology with Honno editor Caroline Oakley. The book will be launched at a special event at the Gŵyl CRIME CYMRU Festival in Aberystwyth in 2022.

‘Honno is delighted to be joining Katherine Stansfield in curating a volume of the best of Welsh women’s crime writing to tie in with Crime Cymru’s splendid new festival. I’m personally looking forward to reading some great new voices and gripping stories from a few familiar names.’ Caroline Oakley

Whether you’re a published author or a debutante, we want to hear from you. As editors, Caroline and I are looking for gripping stories that are complex and convincing, chilling or comforting and with a crime or a mystery at their heart, from the most diverse possible selection of Welsh women writers. The new anthology will offer a follow-up to Honno’s brilliant 2009 crime fiction anthology Written in Blood. With the boom crime writing is enjoying in the UK, and the hard work of Crime Cymru to raise the profile of crime writing in Wales, the time is right for a new volume of crime fiction from the country’s women writers.

Submissions are open to stories featuring ‘traditional’ crime fiction elements of detectives and police as well as amateur sleuths. Contemporary crime fiction takes many forms. Tales of mystery and unease, the macabre and the strange all contribute to the crime canon so if your story is bordering on horror – a close relative of crime fiction – the editors would be keen to read it. We welcome stories set in rural or urban settings, historical periods or contemporary landscapes.

Wales is home to a growing number of crime writers (as the Crime Cymru membership attests) and the country is increasingly popular as a setting for crime drama. This new anthology from Honno is an opportunity to celebrate the crime writing talents of Wales’ women writers, but submissions don’t have to be set in Wales or concerned with particularly ‘Welsh’ themes.

Thinking of submitting? Here’s what you need to know:

Submissions should be between 1500 and 5000 words in length and previously unpublished.

The deadline for submissions is 30 June 2021 and the contents will be announced at the end of August. The resulting anthology will be published in spring 2022. All the selected contributors will receive a fee for the publishing rights to their work.

Send your submission to editor@honno.co.uk with the subject line Honno/Crime Anthology 2022 by midnight on: 30 June 2021.

If you’re not sure whether you meet Honno’s criteria for publication drop us a line and we’ll let you know.

You can find out more about Honno here.