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Latest news:
My 100 word story won £100 prize! Read about black crows, sadness, broken hearts and kintsugi gold cracks. Lovely judges’ comments too: The opening line immediately demands attention and piques the imagination, hinting at the story before the story and the events that caused the heart to crack. The symbolism of the crows (representing death, transformation, or both) is beautifully handled, and their tenderness, alongside the witch-marks and gold, creates a mystical quality. The promise of healing breaks through the melancholy and ultimately provides a hopeful ending that resonated with the judges. Sometimes you just need to reach the correct audience for your work. Over 800 entries to this one and a success. I’ve been in much smaller pools and sunk without trace. You never know who is reading your words. Write what you love.
Taking the long view
Sometimes the view is beautiful and sometimes you’re not high enough to see above the fog.
2026 May and June ‘almosts’ that I’m taking as successes!
- A novel I wrote a couple of years ago (The Little White Lies of Alice Dove, 3k opening) is commended in Marlowe and Christies’s 2026 debut a novel competition
- The same novel (5k word opening) is longlisted to the final 32 in the Fiction Factory 2026 First Chapter Award
- New Writers Flash Fiction award – my 300 word story about the end of the world and moving to live in the Center Parcs bubble dome was shortlisted to last 16 from 652 entries.
Film and screenplay news
Myskatonic are developing one of my stories into a feature film. Kingsley Marshall is developing the screenplay brilliantly. I can’t entirely claim I’m scriptwriting, but I am writing the story, characters and adventures for Kingsley to put into the draft, and Ryan Mackafall is bringing his dark adventure filming to it. Think ‘The Last of Us’ / ‘Stand by Me’ / ‘DARK’ / ‘Lord of the Flies’ / ‘The Beach’ and add in some climate flooding, Doggerland and a spot of cannibalism. Teenage adventures, cold war relics, hidden bunkers and good old storytelling – see the link below for more.
Ryan Mackfall has over 15 years of experience in documentary and music video and live performance, working with some of the biggest global artists (including Nicole Scherzinger, Bruce Dickinson, Green Day, Train, Trivium, and Caspian) and shooting in the world’s most recognizable venues, including Villa Park, Wembley Stadium and the Royal Albert Hall, in addition to documentary work for organisations including Virgin and the European Space Agency.
Kingsley Marshall has over a decade of experience across a range of production roles in music video, shorts, and documentaries, including the archive documentaries Atlas Pool (Jane Darke and Andrew Tebbs 2025) and The Land Demands Blood (Ryan Mackfall 2026), together with a slate of feature films as executive or associate producer including Rose of Nevada(Mark Jenkin 2025), Ebony and Ivory(Jim Hosking 2024), Enys Men(Mark Jenkin 2023), Long Way Back (Brett Harvey 2022), The Tape (Martha Tilston 2021), and Wilderness (Justin John Doherty 2017). Working with writer Lucy Grace, Kingsley has adapted her original story There Were Nine Children Left for the screen. He has also composed music for narrative shorts and documentaries, and is currently working on the score for the feature film The Crossing (Peter Stray 2026).
Articles
I’m puzzling over the conflict between human and more than human timescales, and what literature can offer to support our pifflingly tiny human brains. Stories and poetry can unlock thoughts we haven’t yet considered. Maybe graphic novels, or fragmented texts, or layers and loops can show us more than the traditional novel? My journal article exploring this, ‘Deep-Time Difficulties: Human Stories in a More-than-Human World‘ is recently published in the Journal of Public Humanities.
Read it here Cambridge University Press March, 2026 Open Access Journal
In June 2025, The Conversation published my article about urban trees and their need for protection. 30% of the UK’s trees are outside woodland. I looked at tree canopy cover as well as tree inequity. Read it via the link above, and look for the trees in your local area.
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Writing & editing
Fiction – long and short
Flash and poetry
Critical commentaries
Children’s and picture books
Workshops & tutoring
1:1 and writing groups
Schools and children
Community and libraries
Online and in person
PhD & papers
AHRC funded PhD 2022-2026
‘Stories in Stones: Mines, Memory and the
Geological Imagination in the Anthropocene’.
Contact email:
lgracewriter@gmail.com