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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
Glenda Young
Glenda lives in the northeast where her saga novels are set. Her trilogy of sagas begins with The Toffee Factory Girls. The books are inspired by Horner's Toffee Factory and Dainty Dinah toffee of Chester-le-Street, County Durham. Her Ryhope sagas are set in the mining village where she grew up in the northeast. These are standalone books and can be ready in any order. Her novel THE PAPER MILL GIRL received a commendation from the British... more
Jo Romero
Jo Romero has loved history for as long as she can remember. She achieved her BA (Hons) History: Medieval and Modern degree at The University of Hull in Yorkshire in 1998. Writing on a number of topics at the blog Love British History, she has over 18,000 followers across her Facebook and Instagram channels and has contributed to online magazines and blogs, including The Historians Magazine and Discover Britain, writing on topics including... more
Hester Musson
Hester Musson's debut novel, The Beholders, was a Times bestseller, a Sunday Times historical book of the month and shortlisted for the HWA Debut Crown in 2024. Her second novel, The Night Hag, was published in February 2026, also by 4th Estate. She grew up in Leicestershire and studied English Literature at Bristol University, later completing a master's in drama at the RCS in Glasgow. She was an actress and autocue operator (among... more
James Stejskal
“James Stejskal is an author, military historian, and conflict archaeologist. To gain inspiration and research his writings, he spent 35 years serving with the US Army Special Forces and the Central Intelligence Agency in interesting places like Africa, Europe, the Balkans, the Near and Far East. He is the author of the "Snake Eater Chronicles," a Cold War military & espionage thriller series as well as the non-fiction books "Special... more
