The Hysteria Writing Competition began life in 2012 as a fundraiser for my social enterprise, The Hysterectomy Association. In 2018 I decided to take a break from Hysteria, and in 2019 I closed the association and the competition. In 2020, after a break of two years, I wondered if it might be fun to run the competition again during the lockdowns that were sweeping the globe, and it hasn’t looked back.
Today, the competition is an essential part of the suite of support I provide writers together with my site The Writing Shed. It’s also a regular feature on the UK writing competition scene.
- Before 2019 it was open only to women, now it’s open to everyone.
- Before 2019 the theme was a general ‘topics of interest to women’, now I set a specific theme.
- Before 2019 only women comprised the reading panel, now it’s open to anyone willing to take on the task who wants a back stage pass to see what others submit to a writing competition.
My hope is that the Hysteria Writing Competition provides new and established writers a chance to showcase their words to an audience they don’t yet know. Every category winner is now interviewed because we can all learn much from the experience of others.
My name is Linda Parkinson-Hardman and I’m the host for Hysteria. I’m a writer and author myself and the creator of the weekly writing prompts you’ll find on this site and in my weekly newsletter.
As a life and business coach I also work with writers who want to get their work into the hands of a larger audience, my focus at The Writing Shed is on the business of writing and on the being a writer.
You can find my own writing work on my Substack, The Writing Shed