Louise Worthington | Updates

Publications in Literary Magazines

Louise Worthington — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 02:01:29 -0500

Published in Literary Magazines

Kitchen Call, Orbis, forthcoming July 2026

Red Telephone Boxes, London Grip September 2025

Selkie Wife, The Lake, June 2025

Ghost Garden, Eye to the Telescope (SFPA), April 2025

Prelude: Houses within Houses - The Broken Spine, March 2025

What you conjured – Neologism Poetry Journal - April 2025

The Art of Concealment - Dream Catcher - Summer 2025

Sorry, Earth - Bournemouth Journal, September 2025

Breathing Space - Poet's Choice, September 2025

False Harvest - Zoetic Press, NonBinary Review 2025

City Girl – Eunoia Review March 2025

Furry Raspberries - Coffin Bell (Pushcart Prize nomination, 2025)

Dawn - Poetese March 2025 (Pushcart Prize nomination, 2026)

River Styx - 7th-Circle Pyrite February 2025

Hypothermia's Final Warm Embrace - Tales from the Moonlit Path February 2025

The Support Group Meets in Sandra’s Kitchen - 34 Orchard

Menopause Monsters - Horror Writers Association (HWA) Poetry Showcase XII, October 2025

Published in Literary Magazines Pre-2025

Apples and Chamomile – Boston Literary Magazine

Heedful Nights – Storgy

Colour Blind - The International Short-Short Story Magazine

Traces and View from a High Window – Nine Muses Poetry

Trapped – Flash Fiction North

Yours – The Drabble

The Thief and Chloe – Scribble, Park Publications

Lamb's Tails - HWA Poetry Showcase X:

Her Bravest Day - Under Her Eye, Black Spot Books

Ghost Breath and Stay Dead – The Horror Zine Magazine 2022

Before Crime and Punishment and the History of Tom Jones – Reflex Fiction

Role Reversal – Potato Soup Journal

Waste Paper Love – Muddy River Poetry Review

Teacher – Listen Chamber Magazine

Dreaming Epidermis – Tales from the Moonlit Path

Reflections from an Epicure – Scarlet Leaf Review

Roadkill – The Blue Nib

Teacher – listen – Horla

After the will was read – Ariel Chart

Anxiety- Paragraph Planet

Confessions – 100 words

Reminisce – Microfiction Monday

Survival of an Empath – Dark Winter Literary Magazine

Peace- Fresher Press

Locked-In With Dreams, Sea Burial, Humming and The Light of Conscience – Pen of the Damned

Sea Burial – Sirens Call Publications

Seventh Stage – 101 Words

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Stained Glass Lives: Flash Fiction, Prose Poetry and Short Stories

Louise Worthington — Tue, 03 Jun 2025 06:28:23 -0400

'Listen to 'It Smells Like Rain.'

Stained Glass Lives is 'a sumptuous banquet of love, death, betrayal... authentic and moving.' —Louise Stokes 'Wonderful images that engage all of the reader's senses.' —Debbi Vosey.

In these crystalline fragments of lives interrupted, a Pushcart Prize nominee presents a kaleidoscope of human experience—each story a shard of colour in a larger mosaic of love, loss, and survival.

From ghostly visitations to visceral revenge, from tender family moments to brutal betrayals, these stories capture the prismatic nature of human relationships. A frail widow confronts her mortality. A mercenary shop assistant harbours dark ambitions. A taxi driver witnesses the city's hidden stories. Each character stands at the intersection of light and shadow, where ordinary lives fracture into extraordinary moments.

Written with unflinching honesty and lyrical precision, these tales explore the power of distorted thought, the strength of women's voices, and the beautiful brutality of everyday life. Like light through stained glass, each story transforms the ordinary into something radiant and revelatory.

Perfect for readers who savour the brief but powerful stories of Lucia Berlin, Carmen Maria Machado, and Helen Oyeyemi.

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Pushcart Prize nomination

Louise Worthington — Sat, 22 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I am honoured and delighted to be nominated for a second time for the Pushcart Prize for poetry. Poetose Press nominated by poem Dawn. Thank you to Meia and the team there.

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Pushcart Prize Nominee for 2025!

Louise Worthington — Sat, 23 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Some news I'm still processing: One of my poems has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize! Thank you to the editors at Coffin Bell for this honour. #amwriting #PushcartPrize

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Book Club Discussion Topics for Distorted Days and the lovely Doris!

Louise Worthington — Wed, 25 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The title suggests that time itself has changed shape. How does the novel capture the distortion of ordinary life after betrayal and loss?
Doris is not a conventionally tidy or heroic protagonist. Did that make her feel more real to you?
How does the novel use humour? Did the comic elements soften the pain, sharpen it, or make it more uncomfortable?
Doris discovers John’s betrayal while carrying a pregnancy she has not yet announced. How does that private knowledge affect the emotional force of the opening?
The novel is about betrayal, but also about humiliation. How important is humiliation to Doris’s breakdown?
How did you respond to Lisa? Is she simply the betrayer, or does the novel complicate that role?
Female friendship is central to the damage in the novel. Is Lisa’s betrayal worse than John’s? Why, or why not?
How does miscarriage change the meaning of Doris’s grief? Is she grieving one loss, or several at once?
Doris often experiences domestic objects, rooms and routines as strange or hostile. How does the novel make ordinary life feel surreal?
Did you read Doris’s withdrawal from the world as collapse, resistance, self-protection, or transformation?
What role does loneliness play in the novel? Is Doris lonely because she has been abandoned, or because she has never fully belonged to her own life?
When Lisa returns with her own version of events, did it alter your judgement of her, John or Doris?
Is forgiveness presented as possible, necessary, impossible, or overrated?
What did you make of the novel’s dark comic tone? Could the same story have worked without humour?
By the end, has Doris recovered, changed, or simply learned to live differently inside the distortion?

#WomensLit #LiteraryFiction #BookClubRead #WomenWriters #ReadWomen #BookClubPicks #ReadingWomen #WomenReaders

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Book Club Discussion Topics for Rachel's Garden

Louise Worthington — Wed, 25 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Book Club Questions for Rachel’s Garden

Rachel creates a garden room for everyone she has loved, lost or wronged. Did you see the garden as an act of healing, an act of control, a confession, or something more dangerous?
Which room in Rachel’s Garden felt most emotionally powerful to you: her mother’s, her father’s, Jen’s, Adam’s, or the room for the hoped-for baby? Why?
Maple Cottage and Peckforton Woods are more than settings. How do house, garden and woods reflect Rachel’s inner life?
Rachel wants to transform grief into beauty. Does the novel suggest that beauty can redeem pain, or that it can conceal it?
How did your view of Rachel change over the course of the novel? Did you sympathise with her, distrust her, fear for her, or judge her?
Adam’s behaviour becomes increasingly controlling and volatile. How does the novel explore the way fear can exist even when violence is not immediately visible?
Infertility and pregnancy are central to the emotional stakes of the novel. How does Rachel’s longing for a child affect her choices?
Ollie offers Rachel comfort, tenderness and attention. Did you see him as a genuine escape, a temptation, a catalyst, or another form of danger?
Peckforton Woods contain memory, childhood, inheritance and poison. What do the woods represent to Rachel?
The novel uses poisonous plants as both plot and metaphor. What forms of “poison” exist in Rachel’s life before any physical poison appears?
Was Rachel’s revenge understandable, unforgivable, inevitable, or all three?
The title places ownership on Rachel: Rachel’s Garden. By the end, what does the garden truly belong to — Rachel’s grief, her guilt, her survival, or her violence?
How does the novel handle motherhood: as hope, identity, protection, danger, or moral justification?
Several relationships in the novel are shaped by silence, secrecy or things left unsaid. Which silence did the most damage?
If the garden is a map of Rachel’s emotional life, what is the final room? What has she really planted?

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Now available on Spotify and other stores.

Louise Worthington — Sun, 15 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The audiobook of Distorted Days, narrated by the actress Liz May Brice, is available from Audible, AND these stores:

#audiobooks #audio

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Fantastic Literary Giveaway!

Louise Worthington — Fri, 6 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Click here to enter! Good Luck.

https://booksweeps.com/giveaway/literary-historical-book-club-fiction/

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