Hay Festival – 22nd May – 1st June, 2025
Tickets Now Available – CLICK HERE

Come and hear the writers share and discuss some of their recent work. The Hay Writers’ Circle is a dynamic group, active in Hay for more than 40 years. It offers three competitions annually for poetry, fiction and non-fiction, each of which is open to both members and non-members. There is an active work in progress group for those working on longer projects. The Circle has an ongoing, productive relationship with a local primary school.

The Hay Writers Live! – Event 71

Date – Saturday 24 May 2025  Time – 7pm   
Location – Writers at Work Hub – Hwb Awduron wrth eu Gwaith

Price: £5.00 – CLICK HERE for tickets
We hope to see you there!

New Fiction Workshop

We are delighted to announce the details of a new Fiction workshop with the popular, Alan Bilton. Open to everyone

Writing Outside The Lines: Breaking the Rules of Fiction

What happens if the usual rules of realism don’t apply, gravity is suspended, and you allow your imagination to float free? Join us for an engaging, hands on introduction to breaking the rules of fiction.

From metafiction to anti-fiction, dream fiction to parody and the absurd, participants will find something to inspire, animate, embolden and disturb.

Tickets available via Eventbrite – CLICK HERE

Alan Bilton is the author of four novels, The Sleepwalkers’ Ball, The Known and Unknown Sea, The End of The Yellow House, and At Dawn, Two Nightingales, as well as a collection of surreal short stories, Anywhere Out of the World, and books on silent film comedy, the 1920s. and contemporary fiction. He is head of Creative Writing at Swansea University.

Short Story

2nd Place in our recent Frances Copping Prize for Fiction 2025 is Corinne Harris’ piece.

Our judge, Adele Evershed wrote, “This is a rich and compelling story. It captured both the magic of a safari holiday and the internal conflict of a troubled marriage… “

Well done Corinne!

‘African Nights’ by Corinne Harris

An African night: the foam of the Milky Way bisecting the sky, the newly risen moon not diminishing the glory of the stars but adding its own mystery.  They had been summoned with the news that a leopard had made a kill.  Roaring and jolting in the open topped Land Rover they reached a tree with a carcass abandoned in the fork of its branches.

‘She’s been chased away poor thing, what will she do?’  Jane felt like a boorish intruder into this silent world.  

Martin was impatient, ‘it’s nature’.

‘No, It’s not, it’s us.’

Now, with the hard moonlight transforming the rock and bushes into shadowy indigo, they tracked her, the harsh spotlight picking up the intricate whorls of her coat in the blue night. She moved smoothly, pregnant belly swaying, ears back. Jane was seized by compunction: ‘Leave her, turn off the light.’  Martin huffed, but the others murmured agreement and the guide turned off the light and veered away.

Later in the camp bar, Martin recounted the event, with much ensuing hilarity at her squeamishness.  He boasted about their forthcoming trip to the Kalahari. 

‘Have to take everything in – water, food, fuel – the lot. Camping in the wild, no mod cons – the real Africa.’ 

The Americans were impressed, ‘In a tent?’

‘Yes, just a sheet of nylon between us and the wilderness’. 

She hated the bar, with its red-faced customers, the ‘Big Five’ scoreboard, its unsubtle tourist rivalries.

Yet Jane was in love with Africa.  She loved the sunsets, watching the great orb of the sun falling through the sky, streaking the turquoise with pinks and yellows, seeming to accelerate as it neared the horizon.  Cicadas, the gentle splash of the river, heat still rising from the earth, and then, tentatively, the first few stars emerging.  Getting up at night to the toilet, which was open to the sky, she had marvelled at the lavish unfamiliar stars. She had heard the distant roar of a lion and the scampering of night creatures and had gone back to bed enchanted. 

She had hoped it would be a holiday to heal a marriage scarred by long held resentments.  Three weeks in Botswana: a week of luxury in a safari hotel, a few days glamping, then wild camping in the Kalahari, with a hotel stay in Gaberone to recover.  ‘The holiday of a lifetime’ – and it had certainly been expensive enough.  Predictably, Martin had drunk too much and been surly in the mornings, but up until now it had been a qualified success. Now, she found she was dreading the next stage when it would be just the two of them; a long drive and wild camping in a two-man tent.

As it happened, they both enjoyed the drive, but the Kalahari campsite was a surprise.  It was a stretch of sandy soil, with the yellow haze of dry scrubby grass in the distance, and a nearby group of thorn trees tortured into right angles. There was V -shaped wooden canopy on a concrete base and a large fire pit   A hundred yards away curved mud walls enclosed a long drop toilet.  It was deserted, and the dusty silence of the afternoon felt oppressive.  ‘Where is everyone else?’ she wondered as they began to set up camp.  It was with mutual relief that they heard an approaching car.  Four cheerful khaki-clad South Africans appeared.  They laughed at the notion that they would be camping anywhere near them: 

‘No, it’s all yours, we are a mile down the road’

They stayed for a beer and were pleasant companions, although Jane suspected that some of their more hair-raising stories about the local wildlife were exaggerated.

It was late when they left and there was just enough light left to set up the tent under the thorn trees.  Whilst Martin lit a fire, she hastily prepared a meal.  The flames brought welcome light and warmth but also winged insects astounding in their size and variety.  Martin had lost his earlier bonhomie and slumped in a camp chair drinking his way steadily through a wine box.  The moon had not yet risen, and she felt the darkness as a physical presence, that would enfold and engulf her with its black wings if she moved out of the fire’s light.  She asked Martin to come to the tent with her.  This led to a sudden squall of an argument.

‘I’m so fed up with this holiday,’ he snarled.

‘You wanted to come.’

‘I did want to visit Africa but not with you.   I hate being with you. It’s bad enough sharing a bedroom with you lumbering around, but a tent is insupportable.’

‘I suppose you think you’ve been a great companion this holiday – drunk every night, sulking every morning.’

His anger, fuelled by red wine, reached a crescendo, ‘I’m leaving you.’

‘I suppose you’re planning to go off with your latest floozy, she’s only after your money, she’ll leave you when she discovers you don’t have any’

 ‘I’ll have plenty when I divorce you and sell the house.’

She was appalled ‘That house was given to me by my parents, you have no moral claim to it. 

‘It’s in my name as well’

I did that to protect you and the kids if I died. Why should you have anything from me?’

‘Why should you have more just because you’re a doctor?’ he demanded.

‘Something to do with going through the training and doing the work’ she suggested mildly.

‘You couldn’t have done it without me, all the support I gave you, you couldn’t have managed with the children.’

This outrageous claim had the effect of silencing Jane. She reflected bitterly on the procession of nannies and au pairs she had desperately tried to placate in the face of Martin’s failure to let them leave on time.  She remembered his angry refusals when, exhausted by being called out at night, she had begged him to get up for the baby in the morning.

Anger had conquered her fear – she walked off to the tent and got into her sleeping bag.  She remained resolutely on her side and unresponsive when Martin crawled in later.

‘Jane, Jane, look, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it.  I love you.’ 

She was unmoved.  He must have remembered that all the property was tied up in a deed of trust which divided it according to how much each had contributed to the joint account.  Martin, confident of his future earning power, had insisted it be drawn up before they were married.  He had made no contribution to their finances for years, but she had kept the joint account as insurance.

Waking later to a cold bright light she thought at first, drowsily, that it was headlights.  Unzipping the tent, she saw that the moon had risen.  Suddenly a memory of Martin, his head bent tenderly over a sleeping baby, assailed her. She wept silently – for lost love, for a wasted life, for the marriage she should have had.  Then an unexpected sound reached her – lapping?  She peered out of the tent door.  A hyena, slope- backed, brindled with moon shadows, was drinking from their water bowl.   She licked the bowl clean, picked it up by the rim and trotted purposefully away.  Jane was reminded of their collie who would present them with her food bowl at supper time.  Smiling, she slept.

She awoke early, before the sun’s rays had had time to warm the land.  When she came out of the toilet enclosure the hyena was sitting peacefully a few yards away, head lifted, teated belly drooping.  She was self-contained, dignified.   Jane felt no fear, ‘Good morning.  Where are your babies?’  The eyes that gazed on her were she felt, rather disdainful. ‘I bet your husband wouldn’t dare to talk to you like that.’  How silly she was being.  The hyena clearly agreed and left without a backward glance. 

The resolve which had been building up over a night spent in unwelcome proximity to Martin, crystallised.   When he emerged, blinking bloodshot eyes, she told him briskly to get packed.

 ‘We’re leaving now.’

‘We can’t, we’ve paid for it.’

‘I paid for it and I will spend no more time with you.  You can catch a bus from Francistown.  I’ve had it with this marriage.’

Unaffected by his tearful apologies and promises, she found herself faltering when these were replaced by uncertainty and fear.  ‘Think hyena,’ she told herself. 

‘You can leave with me or you’ll be stranded here.’  By the time they reached Francistown his abject mood had changed to rage. As he stormed out of the car he shouted, ‘You ball-breaking cow.  You will never get another man.  You will live on your own and die on your own.’  It sounded like a biblical curse and for a moment she was shaken.  But, as he walked off, she felt the first tendrils of optimism. She was free!  She was on the holiday of a lifetime.

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