Elin Heron is a recent graduate with Distinction of the Open University MA in Creative Writing. Her
short fiction has been published in Lucent Dreaming, who this year acquired her debut novel for
young adults, JUDE.
Most of Elin's stories tend towards the uncanny and magical, and they have also been published in
Ram Eye Press, Fiddler's Green and Litro Online. She has a number of long list mentions to her name
including with Retreat West and Mslexia. Her short story, JOHN TRUSLOVE, was in the final fifty
entries to the BBC Short Story Competition 2021 before being published in Issue 11 of Lucent
Dreaming.
Elin's poetry has been published in Mslexia and in 2015 she was the overall winner of the Not About
Heroes/Feelgood Theatre War Poetry Competition. Her poetry also examines the same themes of
strangeness and the supernatural, and she is currently creating a body of work looking at this in the
context of family lines, curses and the Welsh landscape.
Elin lives in Derbyshire but is of Welsh extraction and she previously studied Welsh at the University
of Wales, Aberystwyth. She now teaches the language to adults and also has a long career as a
musician in a variety of roles including teaching the piano and as an organist and director of church
music.
JUDE is a supernatural mystery with a romance between two teenage boys, Nick and Jude, at its
heart. Fifteen-year-old Nick has just finished his GSCEs and is stuck at home in the seaside village of
Brexenham, waiting for his results. A boring summer soon transforms, though, as Nick meets Jude
Fletcher, a boy with an aura of magic, staying in a horse-drawn caravan while his artist and
craftsman father, Robin, restores the church's stained glass. Nick is soon intoxicated by Jude, his
magic and the mysterious tales he tells around the campfire after dark. It isn't long before their
connection becomes highly charged and intimate, but the disappearance of local girl Jemma Cox
hangs over the community. Nick's father, a senior police officer, leads an increasingly desperate
investigation to find her, uncovering secrets about Jude along the way.