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Author · Storyteller
Owen Hayes
@owenhayes
Independent writer working mainly in literary fiction, with an interest in craft, books and the practical side of publishing.
Behind the stories
About the writer
Owen Hayes writes across literary fiction and historical fiction, with a particular interest in character, atmosphere, revision and the details that turn a manuscript into a finished book.
The best ideas rarely arrive in their final form.
Books and story worlds
Stories by Owen Hayes
On the writing desk
Currently creating
Later first draft
The Salt House at High Tide
In late nineteenth-century Gloucester, a widowed printer’s clerk takes a temporary post helping to sort the papers of a declining riverside merchant family. Among account books, letters and damaged ledgers, she uncovers a quiet dispute over ownership, memory and who gets to decide what a life was for. As the river rises and the household begins to fracture, she is drawn into a claim that could preserve the family’s name or expose what it was built on.
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Draft progress
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