Georgia Carys Williams

With over one hundred entries, the first year of the South Wales Short Story Competition proved to be a huge success. The competition was created to give unpublished writers a platform to start their writing careers. We received submissions from around the world but sadly, only a few could be chosen. Candy Jar Books is proud to publish the winners of The South Wales Short Story Competition Volume 1. The stories embrace a myriad of topics, including fairytales and fires, aliens and apocalypses, death and even killer trifles...

Growing up in a lonely house on the edge of a wild common, Violet Hart is a quiet and sheltered only child who has always dreamt of becoming something extraordinary: a ballet icon as famous as Margot Fonteyn. Guarding her dream closely after suffering catastrophic loss, Violet falls further into quietness, learning to speak only with her feet as she pursues a path to a career in dance. On the cusp of adulthood, she finally starts to find her voice. But when a secret, all consuming affair with her older lover Theo threatens to send her world into a tailspin, will Violet find herself? Or will she succumb to the silence she knows so well? This beautiful, poetic debut novel warns of the dangers of being a quiet person in a loud world and letting magnetic strangers pull your strings. Set on the Welsh coast, Unspeakable Beauty is an unsettling coming-of-age tale about the importance of learning how to take the lead and be yourself, of finding hope in the shadows, of letting your dreams bloom.

Growing up in a lonely house on the edge of a wild common, Violet Hart is a quiet and sheltered only child who has always dreamt of becoming something extraordinary: a ballet icon as famous as Margot Fonteyn. Guarding her dream closely after suffering catastrophic loss, Violet falls further into quietness, learning to speak only with her feet as she pursues a path to a career in dance. On the cusp of adulthood, she finally starts to find her voice. But when a secret, all-consuming affair with her older lover Theo threatens to send her world into a tailspin, will Violet find herself? Or will she succumb to the silence she knows so well?

Dark, offbeat and haunting, from the bluest Venetian lagoon where a merwoman saves a drowning gondolier to a glass harmonica playing itself on a British tideline, this innovative and perceptive collection ripples with watery memories and poetic unease.