About

Hello, I’m Cath Barton, a writer of novellas, short stories, flash fiction and reviews. I used to say I’d never write a novel, but I’ve now got a couple of those in the pipeline too!

Over recent years I’ve had quite a bit of short fiction published in print and, especially, online. Go to my Stories page to find out where and to read some examples.

I’m now challenging myself to write longer fiction. My novella The Plankton Collector  (2018) won the New Welsh Writing Awards AmeriCymru Prize for the Novella 2017 and is now published by New Welsh Review under their Rarebyte imprint. It also received a Special Mention in the Saboteur Award for the Novella 2019.

My second novella In the Sweep of the Bay (2020) is available from Louise Walters Books  in paperback and e-book, and as an audio book from Audible or itunes. It was Shortlisted in the Saboteur Awards in 2021.

My third novella, Between the Virgin and the Sea, set in a fictitious city on the edge of a continent, where a boy dreams his future, is published on 4 March 2023 in Novella Express #3 by Leamington Books

I have also completed a collection of short stories, The Garden of Earthly Delights, inspired by the fantastical pictures of the Dutch artist Hieronymus Bosch, for which I was mentored by the novelist and short story writer Catherine Merriman courtesy of  Literature Wales. As yet, this is unpublished.

Current projects include:

• • a magical realism novel-in-flash inspired by the life of my Auntie Phyllis, who was a famous circus artiste.
  • a sequel to In the Sweep of the Bay. The first draft of this, A Family Firm, is  novella length, but I plan to develop it into a full-length novel.
  • a  novel set in Kathmandu and Wales in the aftermath of an earthquake.

I often use pictures to inspire my writing and I take a photograph every day, which you can see here.

You can find links to my reviews and articles on my Critical Writing page.

My home is in Abergavenny, South Wales, with my husband Oliver and our cat Feely.