About

Since you’ve visited the site, you might wish to know a little about me and my writing activities. This website is, unashamedly, a record of my published writing and successes but also includes a small blog and essays on books, art, travel, music and other passing or passionate interests. If you have come here looking for my music books, you will prefer my music website, Wild Music Publications. For my Nature-writing literary website (supporting the ADD campaign) publishing poetry and prose by over 200 fantastic writers, click Words for the Wild.

So here’s a little about my writing life:

I write short stories, poetry and flash fiction and, from time to time, I finish writing a novel. My latest novel, ‘Breath’, was shortlisted for the 2019 Fitzcarraldo Editions Novel Prize.

To skip right to the present and into the future – I have stories and poems recently published or forthcoming in The Ofi Press, Under the Radar Issue 21, Loose Muse Anthology, Cosmonauts Avenue, Riggwelter, Storgy, Lonesome October Lit, Prelude Issue 4, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Cabinet of Heed, Queen Mob’s Tea House, the Humanagerie anthology and Ambit 234. A flash fiction has been published by Ellipsis and a short story, ‘My Greenland Halibut’, is freshly hatched in LossLit. Now for the history…

My novel, ‘The Cherrywood Box’, was highly commended in the Yeovil Literary Prize and won the Eludia Award for the entire manuscript; the beginning of my novel, entitled ‘The Glorious Dolores’, was performed at Liars’ League in London and I was awarded an SLS Fellowship on the strength of an excerpt. My novella, ‘Carving Strangers’, was commended in the New Welsh Review awards.

My stories have been shortlisted for the Bristol Prize;
the London Magazine Short Story Competition; the Ink Tears Competition; the Mslexia Short Story Competition; the Asham Awards (twice); the Lightship Memoir Prize; runner-up in the Writers & Artists Competition; gained second place in the Yellow Room Competition; longlisted for the Fish Memoir and Short Story Prize; highly commended in the New Welsh Review memoir awards;

won an Ian St James Award; won prizes in the Mail on Sunday Novel Competition; first place in the NADFAS Poetry Competition; third place in the Magma/Winchester Poetry Festival pop-up competition; two poems – highly commended and commended – in the Winchester Poetry Festival Prize, and winner of the Hampshire Prize; placed second in the Pre-Raphaelite Society Poetry Prize. Two pieces were shortlisted for the Paragram Prize; won the Litro Poland/Bruno Schulz competition; won the Synaesthesia Magazine competition; performed at Liars’ League in London and published extensively online. Print stories are in the Bristol Prize Anthology; Scraps the NFFD anthology; The New Writer; Litro; The Lampeter Review; various BBC magazines; Unthology 7; the Paragram anthology; Somewhere to keep the rain – the Winchester Poetry Festival anthology; the New Welsh Review’s Rarebites, The Pre-Raphaelite Review and, surprisingly, two magazines based in New York – Woven Tale Press and Prelude (Issue 4). Recent work is at/in Ellipsis, Atrium, Spelk, Cosmonauts Avenue, The Cabinet of Heed, LossLit, Storgy and 3:AM Magazine, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Lonesome October Lit, Humanagerie, Riggwelter, Queen Mob’s Tea House and Ambit 234 amongst others. Ten poems inspired by the work of artist, Lucy Ash, were displayed at West Ox Arts Gallery, Bampton, Oxfordshire. I have an MA with distinction in Creative Writing from the University of Chichester where I was joint winner of the Kate Betts Memorial Prize. I like collaborating with artists, musicians and other writers, and generally bouncing ideas around with people or writing stories that are inspired by music and art. I’ve had work displayed at Pallant House, West Ox Arts, the White Building galleries, Winchester Cathedral and the London Underground.

I had a great time working with the writers and artists involved in the arts project: 10 Days. You can read interviews with some of the artists and writers on this website. And I look forward to participating this year in 10 Days/10 Years. I enjoy performing my poetry and stories and am a contributor to Loose Muse, Winchester and belong to the Taverners Writers’ Group and North Hampshire Stanza.

Links to work that has been published online can be found on the Writing Links page. I recommend my poem ‘Dear John’ in Magma, a story: ‘The Cellist and the Wolves’ in the Lampeter Review,  or a very short story: ‘Gloves of Gdańsk’ in Litro and the Polish Cultural Institute.

As far as reading goes, well, I find the short stories of Bruno Schulz, Gogol, Leonora Carrington, Adam Marek, Anthony Doerr, Italo Calvino, Yiyun Li, Tatyana Tolstaya and Ludmilla Petrushevskaya particularly fascinating amongst very many others, oh and I love Russian literature. Novels? SO many… but I will read anything by these amazing writers:
Alison MacLeod, AL Kennedy, Jim Crace, Edmund de
Waal, Sarah Waters, Sarah Hall, Amy Tan, DBC Pierre, Siri Hustvedt, Isabel Allende, Jeanette Winterson, Jonathan Safran Foer, Michèle Roberts, Peter Carey, William Boyd, Claire Fuller.

I’m currently reading, sometimes rereading, sometimes dipping:

Previously: The Pebbles on the Beach by Clarence Ellis,  Daphne Du Maurier by Margaret Forster, Bitter Orange by Claire Fuller and The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk

Folk Zoe Gilbert, H(a)ppy Nicola Barker,

How to Be a Kosovan Bride Naomi Hamill, Steppenwolf Hermann Hesse,

The Art of Love Ovid, Attrib. and other stories Eley Williams,

Lisbon Fernando Pessoa, Selected Poems Federico Garcia Lorca,

The Brooklyn Follies Paul Auster,

The Complete Poems Catullus, Over the Moon Imtiaz Dharker,

El Hacho Luis Carrasco, My Name is Lucy Barton Elizabeth Strout,

Collected Poems Wallace Stevens, Collected Poems Michael Donaghy,

Women and Power Mary Beard, Horse Music Matthew Sweeney,

The Hatred of Poetry Ben Lerner, Olive Kitteridge Elizabeth Strout, We need coffee but… Matthew Welton, The Muse Jessie Burton, Forbidden Line Paul Stanbridge, The Book of Imaginary Beings Borges,

Being Here – the life of Paula Modersohn Becker by Marie Darrieussecq, My Life as a Painter Matthew Sweeney, Kafka on the Shore Haruki Murakami,

A Primer for Cadavers Ed Atkins, The Book of Illusions Paul Auster,

‘All the Beloved Ghosts’ Alison MacLeod and ‘Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman’ Haruki Murakami.

‘The Art of Falling’ by Kim Moore and ‘Don’t Ask’ by Isabel Rogers.

‘Swimming Lessons’ by Claire Fuller and ‘Sweet Caress’ by William Boyd.

‘The Gustav Sonata’ by Rose Tremain. ‘The Essex Serpent’ by Sarah Perry, ‘Solar Bones’ Mike McCormack,  and ‘Falling Awake’ Alice Oswald.

‘The Tormented Mirror’ Russell Edson, ‘Collected Stories of Colette’,

‘No Map Could Show Them’ Helen Mort, ‘Burning Your Boats’ Angela Carter, ‘Stuff’ Charlie Hill,

‘The Little Stranger’ Sarah Waters, and ‘Kith’ Jo Bell.

‘Quarantine’ Jim Crace, ‘No Man’s Land’ Granta, ‘Kiss Me First’ Lottie Moggach,

‘The Museum of You’ Carys Bray, and ‘Fly Away Home’ Marina Warner,

‘The Truth About Julia’ Anna Schaffner, ‘Pond’ Claire-Louise Bennett,

‘The Aleph and Other Stories’ Jorge Luis Borges, ‘Collected Stories’ Angela C

arter, ‘Nocilla Dream’ Agustin Fernandez Mallo, ‘In-Flight Entertainment Helen Simpson, ‘A Little Life’ Hanya Yanagihara, ‘Dancing on the Outskirts’ Shena Mackay,

‘How to Be Both’ Ali Smith, ‘The Buried Giant’ Kazuo Ishiguro,

‘The White Road’ by Edmund de Waal, and I got to know a hell of a lot about porcelain.

‘The Paying Guests’ Sarah Waters, ‘The Passion According to G.H.’ Clarice Lispector,

‘If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller’ Italo Calvino,’The Loser’ Thomas Bernhardt,

‘The Weightless World’ Anthony Trevelyan, ‘La Boutique Obscure’ Georges Perec,

‘The Innocent’ Ian McEwan, ‘Asunder’ Chloe Aridjis, ‘Housekeeping’ Marilynne Robinson, ‘The Paris Wife’ Paula McLain, ‘A Moveable Feast’ Ernest Hemingway, ‘How

To Be A Public Author’ Francis Plugg, ‘The Illusion of Separateness’ Simon Van Booy,

‘The Adulterous Woman’ Albert Camus, ‘The Bell Jar’ Sylvia Platt,

‘The Last Time I Saw Jane’ Kate Pullinger, ‘Berlin Tales’ Lyn Marven,

‘Sleepless Nights’ Elizabeth Hardwick, ‘Giovanni’s Room James Baldwin,

‘The Goldfinch’ Donna Tartt, ‘The Third Policeman’ Flann O’Brien,

‘Jakob Von Gunten’ Robert Walser, ‘Under A Glass Bell’ Anais Ninn,

and ‘Berlin’ by Rory MacLean

‘Books’ by Charlie Hill and ‘Unthology 7’ edited by Ashley Stokes and Robin Jones

‘Stasiland’ by Anna Funder and Grace Paley ‘The Collected Stories’

‘Book of Clouds’ by Chloe Aridjis and ‘Pushkin’s Children’ by Tatyana Tolstaya

‘The Moment’ by Douglas Kennedy, ‘The Syllabus of Errors’ by Ashley Stokes, ‘Goodbye to Berlin’ Christopher Isherwood

‘Unthology 6’ and ‘Our Endless Numbered Days’ by Claire Fuller.

CONTACT

EMAIL: amandaoosthuizen@icloud.com

TWITTER: @amandaoosty