Our Story
The Contemporary Women Writers' Club
The Leap Year is the first collection from The Contemporary Women Writers’ Club. We are six British-based writers, some established, others emerging, who meet regularly around our kitchen tables to discuss new ideas and approaches to our fiction.
The Leap Year challenges contemporary publishing conventions. It has been independently conceived, created, printed and distributed, yet with the same rigorous attention to detail, quality and finish as any commercially published title. The Internet makes the book global, a neat reflection of the stories conjured within its pages, which cover every continent.
The anthology charts transformational moments in 12 women’s lives over the consecutive months of a year. Each story is set in a different country and considers a particular life stage. The 'leaps' in the book are sometimes physical or emotional and always psychological. Common themes recur: self-recognition, re-evaluation and reinvention.
All members of The Contemporary Women Writers' Club share a desire to write and to keep writing, to publish and keep publishing. Through our new imprint, Queenbee Press, we intend to do just that – and so celebrate and perpetuate the art of quality women’s fiction – without a frantic eye on the bestsellers’ lists!
If you are interested in creating a similar writing group to ours, and would like information about our programme, please contact us via the contacts form.
Lucy Cavendish, Miranda Glover, Alexa Hughes Wilson, Rachel Jackson, Anne Tuite-Dalton, Jennie Walmsley