Today’s journey is just a tiny one across the Tamar into Cornwall to visit a most prolific writer of short stories. We first met at another writing conference, which shall remain nameless, and get together from time to time at various writerly events across the south west region. Today’s guest on the Virtual Swanwick tour is Veronica Bright.

Hello Veronica and welcome. Tell us a bit about yourself and your writing.

I’m a writer and teacher who loves to create stories. My writing career had a boost in 2005, when I won the Woman and Home Short Story Competition. Since then my work has won more than forty prizes, and been published in over a dozen anthologies. I’ve written two teaching resource books published by Kevin Mayhew Ltd., and self-published a non-fiction book for writers, How to create believable characters using the Enneagram.

After I’d self-published three collections of award-winning stories, a friend urged me to write a novel. There followed the euphoria of finding an agent, and then the let-down (three adult novels later) of discovering that she couldn’t place any of them with any publisher in the universe, and must therefore terminate our contract. So, I scraped my deflated self off the lowest rung of the ladder, and am now a writing novel for children (watch this space!).

I fell in love with Cornwall when I came to live here in 1988. I love Dartmoor in Devon, too, and together the magnetic personality of these two counties inspires and invades my fiction.

What is your link to Swanwick? Have you been many times in the past?

I won a place at Swanwick in 2012, with a short story, and I loved the week so much I’ve been back every year since, until now. Unfortunately my husband is not in the best of health, so I am missing 2019’s magical week.

What’s your favourite part of the Swanwick week?

I love spending time with so many people who are incredibly young at heart, very positive and very caring.

The after-dinner speakers are always a highlight of the week. Given an unlimited budget and access to all writers, living or dead, who would you book for next year?

David Mitchell, Patrick Gale, Margaret Atwood, Michael Morpurgo or Jacqueline Wilson.

And finally, share with us a picture that illustrates your attendance at VS 2019 and tell us why.

Today I’m remembering the lake, with its early morning joggers and its afternoon wanderers. A place to reflect and a place of inspiration. A tiny piece of heaven.

Thanks for stopping by, Veronica; see you soon and best wishes to your husband for a speedy recovery.