%20(2)_j.jpg)
%20(3)_j.jpg)
London Independent Story Prize 2024 1st Competition Flash Fiction Finalist 'Packets of Hope' Barbara Bridger
Can you please tell us about you and your daily life?
I taught Theatre and Performance Writing at Dartington College of Arts for a number of years. I’m now retired and concentrate on writing and collaborating with the international artist’s collective PartSuspended.
When and how did you get into writing?
I started in my early thirties and I have always written for performance and the page. My scripts have been produced nationally and internationally and my prose, poetry, critical and academic writing has been published in a range of journals including Feminist Review, Stand, Leviathan Quarterly, Warwick Review, London Magazine, Tears in the Fence, Envoi, Quality Women’s Fiction, European Journal of Women's Studies and the Journal of Writing and Creative Practice. I won Prose Writer of the Year (Writers Inc.) and have been shortlisted for a number of awards. Most recently I was Highly Commended in two categories of the 2024 King Lear Prizes and was shortlisted for the Oxford Flash Fiction Prize. You can see more of my writing here: https://independent.academia.edu/BarbaraBridger
How did you develop the idea for your LISP-selected story? Is there a story behind your story? And, how long have you been working on it?
Packets of Hope has a very long history. Several years ago I worked on a research project looking at statutory and non-statutory provision available for women in Staffordshire experiencing domestic violence. Part of my job involved visiting these women in their homes or in a hostel and interviewing them. These interviews had a profound influence on me and I promised myself that, when the project ended, I would try to find ways to give more publicity to this brutal problem. I began this process by writing a play Witnessing and sent the script to Women’s Theatre group along with another play, I Could Have Danced all Night. When Women's Theatre Group chose to develop the second script, I wrote some short prose pieces based on Witnessing. I have continued to update these texts and Packets of Hope is a recent version.
