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news and features
HWA Crown Award Winners 2025
The winners are:Gold: The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry (Canongate Books)Non-fiction: Moederland by Cato Pedder (John Murray)Debut: A Poisoner’s Tale by Cathryn Kemp (Bantam) Read more about the books and the shortlisted titles on... more
Dorothy Dunnett / HWA Short Story Competition 2025
The winning and shortlisted stories! Huge congratulations to our winner, Sean Lusk, our Highly Commended writers, Alex Edwards and Joseph Dragovich, and the writers of our shortlisted stories, Liz Kershaw, Sopie Lenoir, and Elaine... more
Dorothy Dunnett Society / HWA Short Story Competition Longlist
Many congratulations to the writers of our longlisted stories. The shortlist and winning stories will be announced on Friday 3 October! We ended up with nearly 150 stories this year and the standard was extremely high. Many thanks to our first... moreauthor showcase
Fiona Forsyth
Fiona Forsyth taught Classics at The Manchester Grammar School for twenty-five years before a family relocation to the Middle East gave her the time to write. She is author of the Lucius Sestius books, and a stand-alone The Third Daughter, published by Sharpe Books in 2022. She is particularly fascinated by the years of tumult that took the Romans from Republic to Empire, and loathes the Emperor Augustus. Living in Qatar for several years... more
Shelley Puhak
SHELLEY PUHAK is a former English professor who lives near Washington, D.C. Her second nonfiction book, The Blood Countess: Murder, Betrayal, and the Making of a Monster (Bloomsbury, 2026), is a work of true crime and feminist history about Elizabeth Bathory, the 16th century noblewoman alleged to be the world’s most prolific female serial killer. Shelley's nonfiction debut was The Dark Queens (Head of Zeus, 2022), the remarkable,... more
Sophie Perinot
Award winning author Sophie Perinot has enjoyed a decade-long career writing historical fiction. She’s authored solo novels centered on strong, royal women, (The Sister Queens and Médicis Daughter) as well as working with fellow historical novelists like Kate Quinn, Ben Kane, Heather Webb and Eliza Knight to craft collaborative novels about the French Revolution (Ribbons of Scarlet) and the destruction of Pompeii (A Day of Fire). Recently... more
Mike Lewis
Mike Lewis, who writes 19-century historical fiction in the first person with the aim of putting the reader 'in the moment', has just published his new novel about the tragic first ascent of the Matterhorn in July 1865. The Icarus Ascent: Ghosts of the Matterhorn is the 'inside story' of one of mountaineering's most notorious disasters which claimed the lives of four of Edward Whymper's men shortly after they had conquered 'The Impossible... more
