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Val has an MA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University and her memoir In My Father’s Memory, completed on the course, was shortlisted for the Janklow & Nesbit prize. She has won awards in a variety of national and international competitions, including the Carers UK Creative Writing Competition, Ink Tears Short Story Competition, Gloucester Writers Network, Sentinal Literary Prize, Mid-Somerset Festival, Mere Literary Festival and the Val Wood Short Story Prize. Her poetry has been highly commended in the Bridport Prize and in 2019 she won both the Magic Oxygen Literary Poetry Prize and Ware Poets Prize.

 

A member of the Forest of Dean Writers, Dean Writers Circle and NaCOT Poets, she has contributed to, edited and produced 3 anthologies of fictional stories and poetry based on local history, as well as co-editing the Ways to Peace anthology of prose and poetry to commemorate 100 years since the end of WW1. Her work has been published in Graffiti, Stroud Short Stories, Eye Flash Poetry, Eyelands Literary Magazine, Hedgehog Press and Writing magazine. She runs workshops in schools and helps organize poetry festivals and other writing events to promote local poets and authors. She leads a U3A Creative Writing group and is a judge for the U3A Wales Short Story Competition.