An emerging, award-winning, UK-based New Zealand-Irish writer, Alex has lived in both hemispheres and worked around the world in all kinds of weird and wonderful jobs – mostly to do with stories in one way or another.
After award-winning careers in journalism and public relations, she completed an MSc (Distinction) in Coaching and Mentoring, then went on to an MA (Distinction) in Creative Writing. A graduate of the Curtis Brown Creative novel programme, her novels are finalists for Penguin Random House WriteNow; Faber & Faber Writing Chance; Northbound Saraband and Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards.
Alex’s work features on writing courses such as Food in Fiction (Ruby Literary Magazine), Writing the Unsaid (Irish Writers Centre), and Matt Kendrick’s Glorious Words. An occasional reviewer and competition judge, she also takes part in festival panels, readings and publishes interviews. Sins of Omission, her conversation with author-publisher Iona Winter about writing and home, appears in Flash Frontier: Kōrero (September 2024).
Honoured with the Flash Frontier Summer Writing Award for a body of work, Alex is a 2024 London Independent Story Prize Rising Star and nominee for Best Microfiction and writing.ie Short Story of the Year. Her work has won the Irish Writer Novel Fair Prize, and the Northern Crime, Pulp Literature, Crediton and Arvon prizes and the HG Wells Grand Prize.
Her short fiction has short-listed for the Kathy Fish Fellowship and is often a finalist in prizes, including among others, the Katherine Mansfield Sparkling Prose (twice) and has been a winner in prizes including the Northern Crime; Arvon; CWA Debut Dagger Opening Lines; Pulp Literature; Crediton and HG Wells and is often a finalist, including among others, the Sunday Business Post/Penguin Prize; Bridport (flash and short story); Arvon; CWA Debut Dagger; At the Bay: Katherine Mansfield Sparkling Prose; Cuirt, Maria Edgeworth; The Word Factory; Words on the Waves; Roberts; Mslexia; Fish; Margot Manchester; Grindstone; Over the Edge New Writer of the Year; Tillie Olsen; Oxford; Bath, Ilkley; Plaza; Cambridge; Write By the Sea; Leicester Writes; Wells; Reflex; Casket of Fictional Delights; Solstice Shorts; Aurora; New Zealand Flash Fiction Day and Lorian Hemingway prizes.
Her stories are widely published in print and appear in anthologies, including Best Small Fictions; Bonsai: Best Small Stories from Aotearoa New Zealand; He Moana o Reo / Ocean of Languages; Pav Deconstructed: Pavlova through the eyes of everyday Kiwis; Cluster of Lights: Then and Now 52 Writers Around the World; The Broken Spiral (UNESCO Dublin City of Literature Read); The Real Jazz Baby (Saboteur Awards); Dusk: Stories and Poems from the Solstice Shorts Festival, Bath Flash Fiction Anthology; Pulp Literature; Flash Fiction Festival Anthology; Forgiveness; FlashFlood: The National Flash Fiction Day Anthology; Takahē; Firewords; Words on the Waves; Pure Slush; Truth Serum; Tishman Review; Take Tea with Turing and Heron (Katherine Mansfield Society).
Online, her work has been published at, among others, Flash Frontier; The Word Factory; The Short Story; Reflex; MIR; Fictive Dream; Casket of Fictional Delights; Spelk; Ruby; Headland; Blink-Ink; Nottingham Review; 101 Words; Field of Words; London Journal of Fiction; Hypertext and Splonk.