Colwill Brown was born and raised in Doncaster, South Yorkshire. Winner of the 2025 BBC National Short Story Award, she holds an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin, where she received a James A. Michener Fellowship, and an MA in English literature from Boston College. Her work has received scholarships and awards from the Tin House Summer Workshop, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Hedgebrook, Ragdale, the Anderson Center, GrubStreet Center for Creative Writing, and elsewhere. For 16 years she’s lived with ME/CFS, a debilitating neurological disease triggered by a virus that, due to systemic medical neglect, currently has no treatment. A proud Donny lass, she claims to have played bass guitar in (nearly) every rock venue on South Yorkshire’s toilet circuit.

Books by Colwill Brown

We Pretty Pieces of Flesh

by Colwill Brown - Fiction, Women's Fiction

“Ask anyone non-Northern, they’ll only know Donny as punchline of a joke or place they changed trains once ont way to London.” But Doncaster is also the home of Rach, Shaz and Kel, bezzies since childhood and Donny lasses through and through. Never mind that Rach is skeptical of Shaz’s bolder plots; or that Shaz, who comes from a rougher end of town, feels left behind when the others begin plotting a course to uni; or that Kel sometimes feels split in two trying to keep the peace. The girls are inseparable, and their friendship as indestructible as they are. But as they grow up and away from one another, a long-festering secret threatens to rip the trio apart.