Biography

Lucy Grace writes poetry, flash, short and long fiction. She is based in North Nottinghamshire and writes about nature, deep-time, geology and climate-change, reflecting how these affect human lives and relationships. Her first degree is in Geography, and subsequent Masters Degrees are in MA Education (Uni of Leics) and MA Creative Writing (Nottingham Trent University). She is in the final year of a full-time creative-critical AHRC-funded PhD titled, ‘Stories in Stones: Mines, Memory and the Geological Imagination in the Anthropocene.’  In 2025 she was awarded a three-month UKRI Policy Internship with Natural England (linked to DEFRA, the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) to consider the cultural, social and ecological importance of trees to the UK population and how these important trees can be mapped and protected.

Around twenty of her pieces are featured in anthologies and she has won or been shortlisted for many awards (Winner – Writers and Artists Yearbook Short Story Award, and placed in others including Aesthetica, Mslexia, Bath, Bridport, Fish, Exeter, Alpine Fellowship, Bristol Prize, Berlin Prize, Scottish Short Story Award.) Her draft novels have been longlisted in the Bath Novel Award (twice), the Mslexia Novel Award, the Lucy Cavendish Debut Novel Award (twice), the Exeter Novel Prize and won first place in the Blue Pencil Novel Pitch Prize. Two of her climate stories have recently been optioned for screen. She is keen to develop the relative literary silence of the coalscape and encourage unheard voices.  Her latest short story is longlisted in the 2025 Aurora Writing Prize, an award judged by Irenosen Okojie. The longlist of 25 stories, from over 1299 entries, will be judged in November.

January 2025 My current work is a novel set in the Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire coalfield. It explores the classification of land and the position of coal spoil heaps, particularly coalfield communities’ sense of belonging to what is, in essence, a rubbish dump. These rubbish dumps are teeming with biodiversity not found elsewhere. That the material of the slopes is 300 million years old and now piled on the surface as ‘new’ land is curious. Changing weather patterns in the Anthropocene require us to care for the land differently. New literature can support humans through such changes whilst maintaining the sense of awe and wonder our natural world deserves. There may be no ‘new’ stories, but there are fresh ways of telling important, relevant themes.  My novel draft is almost complete, and I write poetry and flash to communicate ideas and explore the role of witness, recorder or activist in highlighting climate emergency.  

I am redeveloping my pre-Covid website. Further links and work to follow in 2025.

(The following pages were last updated in 2019)

Lucy Grace writes fiction. Since starting writing in 2018 her short stories and flash fiction have won both national and international awards and feature in several print anthologies and online. She is currently working on her debut novel, which was longlisted for the 2019 Lucy Cavendish Debut Novel Award.

Awards, Scholarships and Publications:

October 2019

• 100 word flash, ‘Night Journey With My Father’ was selected for the print edition of Ellipsis Zine 6: 2119, ‘One hundred words, one hundred years from now’.
• My story, ‘Sand Seven’ published in the print anthology from ‘The 2019 Bristol Short Story Prize’.

September 2019

• Awarded first place in the North Notts Literary Festival Short Story Award with my short story ‘Me, The Canal and Shrimp’ which will be posted on their website soon.
• Awarded an 80% scholarship from Arvon, based on a sample of my writing, to attend a week’s writing course at The Hurst, Shropshire to work with Kerry Young and JJ Bola in October 2019.
• Offered a free bursary place at the Smokelong Quarterly Flash Fiction writing event to be held in Birmingham in September 2019.

August 2019

• Won first prize in the Faber Academy #QuickFic competition.
• Longlisted in the international 2019 Berlin Writing Prize – shortlist announced on 1.10.19.
• Longlisted in the Scottish Arts Club Short Story Award, Edinburgh. The story will be published in the print anthology.
• Longlisted in the Retreat West Micro Flash Fiction competition.

July 2019

• Shortlisted in the 2019 Bristol Short Story Prize and will be included in the prestigious 2019 print anthology. Winners announced on 12.10.19.
• Shortlisted again with a different novel for the Jane Fallon Scholarship for a place on the Curtis Brown Creative Novel Writing course. Close, but no cigar. (That’s three times shortlisted now with two different works – I am clearly not their cup of tea. I suspect I’m just too Northern – I have gravy on my chips and everything.)

June 2019

• Poem shortlisted in Creative Futures 2019 Writers Award, representing underrepresented writers.
• Shortlisted in the 2019 Winter Solstice Arachne Press Short Story Award.

May 2019

• Shortlisted in the Mairtin Crawford Awards at the Belfast Book Festival.

April 2019

• Debut novel longlisted (last twenty from seven hundred entries) in the 2019 Lucy Cavendish Debut Novel Award.
• Shortlisted in the Chiplit – Chipping Norton Literary Festival Short Story Competition.

March 2019

• My debut collection, a novella in flash, is shortlisted for publication in a competition run by EllipsisZine. It did not win and remains unpublished (hello, agents out there!)

February 2019

• The opening chapters of my debut novel made the shortlist for the single scholarship place on the Curtis Brown Creative novel writing course.
• Won an international first chapters competition with Three Rock Writers Retreat, Crete

January 2019

• Won one of twenty places in the Ellipsis Zine: Five to be published in the print edition
• Won fifth place in the WritersHQ ‘From LGBTQ With Love’ short story competition, short fiction piece published online

In 2018:

• Won first place in the Writers and Artists Yearbook 2018 short story competition
• Won the scholarship award to the international Iceland Writers’ Retreat
• Shortlisted in the Bridport Prize
• Shortlisted in the Curtis Brown Creative scholarship for debut novel writing course
• Shortlisted twice in the Reflex Fiction Awards
• Won highly commended in the Brittlestar Literary Magazine short story award, judged by Nicholas Royle
• Longlisted in the Fish Flash Fiction Award
• Longlisted in the international Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize
• Published in the Dusk: Solstice Shorts print anthology with Arachne Press
• Second prize in the Hammond House Press short story competition
• Second prize in the Newark on Trent Literary Festival short story award

Get in touch with her via email or twitter, or fill out your details on the contact page.