Hillard Morley

Immersed in the written and spoken word for as long as she can remember, Hillard Morley studied Literature at Durham University and wrote and performed with Rough House Theatre before a long career as a teacher of Drama and English and a Head of Performing Arts. Igniting enthusiasm and creativity for language and expression has always been a passion.

Hillard specialises in writing prose and loves the precision and discipline of the short story and flash fiction. Her work has been published widely in literary journals such as The Sheepshead Review, The Literatus and Switchback, and she won the OWT Short Fiction Prize. Locally she was shortlisted in the Independent Arts 'Jot' award, has been published in Brevity, and was the featured writer in issue two of The Figlet.

Her first novel, a literary political thriller, The Shadowing of Combfoot Chase, was published in 2022. Frightening and funny in equal measure, it is rooted in concerns about the rise in surveillance capitalism and asks us to consider the consequences of privacies being eroded.

Hillard is currently working on a collection of short stories for the Dark Wight project with the Naked Figleaf Press where she is an editor, and is preparing a second novel, Nothing Starts but Everything Begins for publication. She is also helping to adapt a series of flash fiction stories by Anmarie Bowler of Brevity for stage. 'Keeper' helped launch the Cowes Fringe 2025 at the Scratch Night in which Hillard played the character of El.

Tapping into an on-going love of performance, Hillard often shares her own and others' work with live audiences at spoken word events, and is currently helping to coach other writers to read their work with dynamism for the Myth Makers project, which will culminate at the IW Literary Festival in the autumn.