Angelita Bradney, writer
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About Angelita
Angelita Bradney is a prize-winning fiction writer with British and Filipino heritage. Her work has been published in numerous literary magazines and anthologies and performed on stage. She has an MA in Creative and Life Writing from Goldsmiths, University of London, and is a graduate of the Faber Academy.
Angelita's novel-in-progress, Wildwood, is a British-Filipino family drama entwined with ghosts and folklore. Wildwood draws on her tumultuous family history, inspired by notebooks her mother gave her where she had written down her memories of growing up in the rural Philippines.
Wildwood was shortlisted for the 2024 SI Leeds Literary Prize, won the 2022 Byte the Book/Hachette UK bursary for debut authors and was runner-up in the 2021 Writers & Artists 'Turn the Page' competition.
You can also read many of Angelita's short stories below. These explore themes such as tricky family relationships, the desire for freedom, and dealing with buried secrets - often told with humour or a touch of magical realism.
“Angelita’s writing is clear, cold, seemingly dispassionate, taking us to the heart of trauma and its effects on memory, leaving the reader with the spaces to wonder what we and history may also choose to forget. This is superb writing: both imaginatively rich and confidently spare in crafting.” Cathy Galvin, Director of The Word Factory, Co-Founder of The Sunday Times EFG Short Story Prize, and judge of the 2017 National Memory Day short story competition.
Wildwood
At a family reunion in a remote woodland cottage, a mother and daughter must face their ghosts and unravel the dark secret in their Filipino heritage.
A family gathering summons Nina Hawkins to Wildwood, the crumbling cottage where she grew up in the primeval Forest of Dean. From the moment she arrives she’s surrounded by the ghosts of her troubled adolescence, from her struggles to fit in as a mixed-race child to the tragic death of her best friend, Ellie. Nina’s free-spirited mother, Grace, can’t understand Nina’s obsession with the past. Having left her home country of the Philippines behind, newly-divorced Grace wants to live life to the full.
But memory runs deep as tree roots, and as the week progresses, apparitions appear in the shadows of the forest and forgotten friends resurface. Nina realises that someone doesn’t want her to forget Ellie’s death: someone who knows the secret reason for Nina’s guilt. The more Nina investigates, the more she becomes certain that Grace, too, is hiding something. But the truth is more shocking than she can imagine, tangled in her heritage that leads back to the witch doctors and headhunting tribes of the Philippines.
Like The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller with a Filipino twist, Wildwood would also appeal to readers of Ponti by Sharlene Teo and Sisters by Daisy Johnson.
SHORTLISTED: SI Leeds Literary prize 2024
WINNER: Byte the Book and Hachette UK bursary for debut authors 2022RUNNER-UP: Writers & Artists Turn the Page competition 2021.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash.
Short stories and flash fiction
Angelita's short stories and flash fiction have been published in various literary magazines and anthologies. Her work has also been shortlisted and highly commended in many competitions including the Fish prize, Inktears, Retreat West, City Writes, Writers' Forum magazine and Shooter Literary Magazine. She won the 2017 National Memory Day short story competition with All that water must be unimaginably heavy. Her flash fiction piece, Shape-shifting for beginners, was selected for the 2025 Best Microfiction Anthology.
Forthcoming: Camelot
Short story to be published by BFS Horizons, summer 2025
Aboard a space station orbiting the remains of a damaged planet, a woman prepares for a spacewalk.
Flash fiction published in Emerge Literary Journal, November 2024
When your daughter tells you she's a cat.
Selected for Best Microfiction 2025.
Short story performed by Liars' League, October 2024
Susan seems like an ordinary old lady with a dream of moving to a country cottage. But first she needs to clear out the atttic...
Read on stage by actor and voice artist Margaret Ashley. Honourable mention for Liars' League best stories of 2024.
Short story published in Shooter literary magazine 'Escape' issue, August 2021
A rare date night and an accident at home pushes one woman to acknowledge the truth about her marriage.
Available to buy here.
Bembridge Beach
Flash fiction published in Ellipsis Zine, March 2021
A relationship, a beach, a secret.
Creative non-fiction published by Dear Damsels, June 2020
"Friday, Day 40 (feels like 140)..."
A reflection on the highs and lows of lockdown as a working mother.
Winner, Bromley libraries 'life under lockdown' writing competition 2020.
Flash fiction published by Fictive Dream, March 2020
A reclusive old man responds to the troubling events of 2020.
Flash fiction published by Ellipsis Zine, March 2020. Republished by FlashFlood June 2020.
"Choose a pen that writes the colour of your curiosity, mark your books with your name and mine." Perhaps you once had a teacher like Miss Quinn?
Published by Inktears, August 2019. Highly commended in the 2018 Inktears short story competition
A misdemeanour committed in a seaside town has lifelong consequences.
An earlier version of this story was performed in 2015 by Liars' League NYC.
Shortlisted for the Writers Forum magazine short story competition.
Short story published by the Cabinet of Heed, December 2018
An old recipe book forces someone to re-evaluate a painful childhood.
Shortlisted for the 2018 Link Age Southwark short story competition, longlisted for the 2014-15 Fish short story prize.
Short story published in Riggwelter, September 2018
A stand-in fortune teller has an unexpected visitor.
Flash fiction, published by The Fiction Pool, June 2018 and republished by FlashFlood, June 2019
"I take Sindy and Barbie to the woods..."
Come and Gone
Flash fiction published April 2018 in Nothing is As It Was, an anthology of short stories about climate change.
A seaside town, before and after.
Winner City Writes 2018, longlisted for the 2017 Dorset Fiction Award, and selected by Retreat West for this anthology.
Available from Amazon.
Golden Eyes
Published by Stories for Homes 2, October 2017
A stray cat pushes an elderly man to make a life-changing decision.
Published in Stories for Homes 2, a wonderful anthology of fiction on the theme of 'home'. All profits from the book go to the charity Shelter.
Available from Amazon.
Gap
Creative non-fiction published by Ellipsis Zine, October 2017
"When I was young my mother told me I had family on the other side of the world."
Lobsterfest
Published by Retreat West, September 2017
Flash fiction published by FlashFlood, June 2017
"He didn't sign up for this when he swiped right."
All that water must be unimaginably heavy
Winner of the 2017 National Memory Day short story competition
The judge, Cathy Galvin, Director of The Word Factory and Co-Founder of The Sunday Times EFG Short Story Prize, commented:
“Angelita’s writing is clear, cold, seemingly dispassionate, taking us to the heart of trauma and its effects on memory, leaving the reader with the spaces to wonder what we and history may also choose to forget. This is superb writing: both imaginatively rich and confidently spare in crafting.”
You can read the story, along with the winners from the other categories, here.
Published by Litro, February 2016
A schoolgirl horror story. Shortlisted for the 2014 Fish short story prize.
Photo credits: NASA (Camelot), Gift Habeshaw (Shape-shifting for beginners), Sander Dewerte (Bag of Bones), JP Valery (Saturday Night), Adrian Craig (Bembridge Beach), Valentina Locatelli (While this lasts), Alex Atudosie (Other Folks' Troubles), Ramakant Sharda (Miss Quinn), Josh Withers (The Tower), Jessica Castro (Book, Kitchen, Shelf), Tom Quandt (Illumination), Wendy Aros Routman (Empty nest), Charles Deluvio (A peachy moment), Christiane Teston (Is there magic here?), Jeremy Vessey (Other Chances), Jordan Opel (Gap), Amy Humphries (Tinder), Tomas Robertson (All that water), Andalucia Andaluia (She).
