About
Tanya Pengelly is an award-winning writer based in Warwickshire, England. She holds a PhD in creative writing and the narratology of friendship, with a particular interest in traditional performance storytelling. Her fiction moves fluidly between literary psychological and speculative fiction, often exploring the ways in which external narratives—whether realistic, surreal, or cosmic—shape individual perception and reality. Her work is deeply rooted in landscape, using setting not just as backdrop, but as an active force in the stories we tell ourselves.
In 2024, Tanya won the Robert Day Award for Fiction and the prestigious Rhys Davies Short Story Award for Welsh writers. Her stories have been featured in The Book of Coventry anthology from Comma Press, as well as the literary journals New Letters, Visual Verse, and Here Comes Everyone. She is currently working on her first novel, a stream-of-consciousness exploration of grief and loyalty, following a man’s journey through war-torn parallel worlds to save a friend.
Tanya served as chair of the board for the Beyond the Border International Storytelling Festival until 2023 and currently leads Milverton Writers, an international group of dedicated fiction writers and poets.
Publications
Selected works appearing in literary journals, anthologies, and competitions.
'So Much Forest', New Letters, 2025
Winner of the Robert Day Award for Fiction
A woman takes her dogs for a walk in the rain and, over the course of a single 5,000-word sentence, her thoughts unravel—slipping into memories of childhood, love and loss, and fleeting moments of wonder. Past and present blur as the landscape draws her in, filling her restless mind with the weight of absence and the quiet constancy of trees. So Much Forest is a quiet story about memory, grief, and the way the natural world holds onto us, even when everything else feels like it’s slipping away.
'A Dictionary of Light', The Rhys Davies Short Story Award Anthology, Parthian Books, 2024
Winner of the Rhys Davies Short Story Award
A daughter traces the luminous memories of her father through a series of fleeting natural phenomena, each word a window into moments of love, wonder, and grief. Spanning decades and landscapes, the story captures how light — in all its forms — becomes a vessel for memory, connection, and the enduring presence of someone lost. Rebecca F. John, said: “This year’s winning story is structurally inventive and emotionally breathtaking. A Dictionary of Light contains beautiful imagery, demonstrating Tanya Pengelly’s incredibly deft hand, and through its honesty creates that sensation which only the best writing can – that of recognizing a deep truth.”
'Carriages at Three', The Book of Coventry, Comma Press, 2024
A young woman adrift in a grey unfamiliar Coventry finds unexpected purpose and belonging through the hidden treasures of its archives, cathedral ruins, and lost stories. As seasons change, she quietly begins piecing together a fractured place—and herself—realising that sometimes, you must write a new story when the old one is scattered and incomplete. Part of Comma Press’s popular Reading the City series, offering a literary guide to one of the UK’s most overlooked but fascinating modern cities.
More Publications
'The Light, The Light', short fiction, Visual Verse
'The Halfway Bar', short fiction, Visual Verse
'Little Alsop', short fiction, Visual Verse
'Safe Hands', short fiction, Visual Verse
'Per Aspera Ad Astra', short fiction, Visual Verse
'Lesson 101', short fiction, Here Comes Everyone
'Goddom', short fiction, Visual Verse
'The Reactor', poetry, Visual Verse
'That Leg Follows Me Around the World', poetry, Visual Verse
'The Neimansland', poetry, Visual Verse
'Yellow Mountains in China', short fiction, The University of Birmingham Short Story Anthology
'The Adventures of Alex Puddle, Aged 8', short film script, runner up in New Zealand's 48-Hour Film Competition
'Daddy's Underground', short radio play, BBC Radio 4
Awards
Contact
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