Milverton Writers
Milverton Writers began in 2016 with a small group gathered round a fire in a library, sharing drafts and biscuits in equal measure—and often spilling out afterwards to the pub for a pint. Founded by Jon Mycroft, the group was originally created to support writers who had completed a Master’s in Creative Writing and wanted to hold onto that energy—a space that was focused, generous, and ongoing.
Now led by Tanya Pengelly, Milverton Writers has grown into a small international community that meets online but still carries the spirit of those early meetings: informal, attentive, and quietly serious about the work. Between us, we write crime fiction, speculative stories, poetry, plays, and the occasional piece that stubbornly resists categorisation.
What binds us isn’t genre or ambition, but a shared commitment to paying attention—to the work, and to one another. We’ve celebrated publications and prizes, yes, but just as often we’ve stayed with slow drafts, rewrites, and the long pauses of fallow brains. And we’ve become, dare we say it, friends.
In 2025, we tentatively launched the newly formed Milverton Press with the aim of publishing an anthology of our work—and perhaps, in time, the work of other writers as well. We hold no grand expectations, only the simple, enduring pleasure of playing with words, putting them on paper, and creating something beautiful we can be proud of.
Please note that Milverton Writers is currently closed to new members—this isn’t about exclusivity, but because something steady and settled has taken root, and we’re looking after it.
The Writers
Editor & Lecturer, Founder of Milverton Writers
Jon Mycroft is a lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London, and holds a PhD in creative writing and short story pedagogy. He has taught creative writing at Ruskin College Oxford, the University of Birmingham and the University of Warwick, and founded Milverton Writers back in 2016. His academic speciality is short fiction, but he also covers areas as diverse as post-war dystopian fiction, the history of games and competition, modernist art, digital philosophies, and visual methodologies. As well as teaching for fifteen years, Jon is also a fiction editor, working closely with writers to develop their novels to a professional standard. You can find him at www.jonmycroft.com.
Writer & Editor, Leader of Milverton Writers
Tanya Pengelly is an award-winning writer based in Warwickshire, England. Her fiction moves fluidly between literary psychological and speculative modes, often exploring how external narratives—whether realistic, surreal, or cosmic—shape individual perception and reality. In 2024, she won both the Robert Day Award for Fiction and the prestigious Rhys Davies Short Story Award for Welsh writers. Her stories have appeared in various publications, including anthologies from Comma Press, Parthian Books, and New Letters. Tanya holds a PhD in Creative Writing and the narratology of friendship from the University of Birmingham and offers a short story critique service. You can find her at www.tanyapengelly.com.
Writer, Poet & Spoken Word Artist
Raef Boylan is a Coventry-based writer who experiments. He is the Lead Editor of Here Comes Everyone, a Coventry-based, bi-annual literary magazine of poetry, fiction, articles and artwork. published by Silhouette Press. He organises Fire & Dust (Coventry’s monthly poetry open mic), and is a previous winner of the CU Short Story Award and Frederick Holland Poetry Collection Award, and has been shortlisted for The Big Issue Short Fiction Award. He recently headlined at Positive Images Festival and Earlsdon Fringe Festival, and his spoken word was commissioned for Theatre Absolute’s ensemble production Sphere.
Writer & Poet
Sophie Petrie is a Devon-based writer of literary fiction and prose-poetry. She has a Masters in Writing from Warwick University. Her work has been published in various magazines and anthologies, including Reflex Fiction, Here Comes Everyone, and Odes To The Ash Tree. She was awarded the Local Writer’s Prize in the 2024 Parracombe Writers Prize, and was placed second in the 2025 Ironclad Creative Short Story Competition. She used to spend her days hurling axes for a living—now she throws words instead. You can contact Sophie here.
Science Fiction Writer
Brian Sigmon is a space adventure daydreamer who decided to start writing his stories down. He loves to read and write fast-paced, entertaining sci-fi that grips you from the first page and doesn’t let up. Brian has a Ph.D. in theology from Marquette University, and serves on the advisory board of AI and Faith, a group dedicated to exploring the intersection of science, technology, and spirituality. Brian is a book editor, woodworker, sports fan, armchair futurist, and half-decent kids soccer coach. He lives with his wife Amy and their three children in Nashville, Tennessee. Check out Brian's books at www.briansigmon.com.
Pete Waterhouse
Writer
Pete Waterhouse is the author of a book of short stories, Unintended Consequences, and the novel Crying From One Eye. He began telling tales in childhood and hasn’t stopped. What some dismissed as daydreaming definitely wasn’t just being lazy. A degree in Physics convinced him that, while he found science fascinating, he’d make a really rubbish scientist. Making stuff up was just so much more fun than having to be, well, factual. Luckily, he stumbled into a job in academic publishing that allowed him to read about scientific progress, but without having to do all the hard work. He became editor of several journals and is now a freelance writer, copyeditor and proofreader. He has always written short stories to entertain friends and family, but when one story ended up being the length of a novel, he decided it was time to take things seriously and signed up for various courses, including at West Dean College and Warwick University, where he received an MA in Writing. He’s still making stuff up.