The Historical Writers’ Association helps traditionally published authors to connect with other writers, to find publicity opportunities and benefit from involvement in a thriving, supportive community. Interested in joining?
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The official website of the HWA
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
Douglas Jackson
I was born in Jedburgh in the Scottish Borders and history has always been in my blood. I left school when I was 15 to join the local paper because I liked writing and in those days universities were only for other people. Reporter, sub-editor, chief sub and night editor, I eventually spent nine heady years as assistant editor of The Scotsman, before digging an escape tunnel on the train with my laptop, which is probably my greatest and (come... more
Maggie Craig
Maggie Craig writes Scottish historical fiction and non-fiction. Her non-fiction covers the Jacobite women and men of 1745, the Scottish Radical Rising of 1820 and Red Clydeside of the early 20th century. Her novels and family sagas are set in Edinburgh and her home town of Glasgow. She has served two terms on the committee of the Society of Authors in Scotland and is an experienced and popular speaker around Scotland’s libraries and book... more
Carolyn O’Brien
Carolyn O'Brien was born in Manchester. She studied English at Cambridge University before qualifying as a solicitor. She now works part-time as a consultant lawyer as well as writing historical fiction. Her writing has a strong sense of the north-west of England and its radical past, as illustrated by her first novel, THE SONG OF PETERLOO which was published to coincide with the bicentenary of the Peterloo Massacre. Her second novel is ROSE... more
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
