Below is a list of my writing achievements and publications to date.
You can read my author bio here.
My Best Friend Chloe
Short story My Best Friend Chloe published in issue 28 of Gutter magazine.
Gutter is an award-winning, high quality, printed journal for fiction and poetry from writers living in Scotland and around the world. I was also invited to read at the launch event at Typewronger Books as part of the Edinburgh BookFringe.
A Séance For The Living
Short story A Séance For The Living chosen for publication in Mslexia’s ghost-themed showcase.
Writer Rebecca Tamás, who selected the stories for publication, said: ‘A Séance For The Living by Bethany Wren confronts the supernatural much more directly, using visceral and unsettling language and a breathless pace to introduce the reader to a medium whose power is being tested by rationalists: ‘My bell on the dresser is ringing, jangling as if it were outside being buffeted by the wind. It is all these physical things, but it is also a feeling. The sensation that we are not alone in the room.’ This story is tense and compelling, but offers more than thrills, turning into a fascinating meditation on the possibility of touching other worlds, and of the kinds of knowledge that go beyond fixed and rigid concepts.’
Shriek Song
Short story Shriek Song selected for publication in New Writing Scotland 40.
Publication:
New Writing Scotland
Publication date:
August 2022
Link:
Thirty-Six Up
Highly commended and received joint second place in the Bournemouth Writing Prize Short Story competition. Story Thirty-Six Up published in two anthologies by Fresher Press.
Of Thirty-Six Up, judge Sophie Scard, a literary agent at United Agents, said: ‘What perhaps was most striking was the way the story plays with our sense of tension and drama. There’s a subtle sense of something almost arrived at, something remarkable not quite done, that makes this story special.’
Competition:
Bournemouth Writing Prize Short Story competition
Publication date:
November 2021
Link:
https://www.fresherpublishing.co.uk/updates/bournemouth-writing-prize-short-story-winner-announced/
Creative Writing Master’s
Dissertation entitled Motherland: Mapping Women in the Natural Landscape on women, sexuality, motherhood and the natural world, using Daisy Johnson’s Fen and Molly Aitken’s The Island Child as primary texts. Produced short story collection entitled Shriek Song on the female tongue – exploring women and femininity through various sounds, myths and the mundane.
Mark:
Distinction
Year of completion:
2020
University:
Royal Holloway, University of London
Take Me To The Mountains
Poem Take Me To The Mountains used in advertising campaign for the West Candle Company.
The poem has also been widely shared online and across social media.
Other notable achievements:
2023: Honourable mention in Shooter Short Story Competition
2023: Longlisted for the Exeter Writers Short Story Competition
2023: Shortlisted for the Scottish Book Trust New Writers Awards
2022: Longlisted for the Berlin Writing Prize
2020: Longlisted for the London Library Emerging Writers Programme
2020: Longlisted for the Fish Short Story Prize
Bethany Wren 