AN aspiring Abergavenny author has just picked up a New Welsh Writing Award for her unpublished novella.

Retired NHS worker Cath Barton who has had her short stories published in anthologies worldwide, wrote the ‘The Plankton collector’ in 2015 after a local writing group challenged its members to write a novella.

She picked up the gauntlet and after a period of intensive writing, finished it and decided to enter it into a competition.

There was little in way of reply.

Cath told the Chronicle, “The silence was deafening. I sent it elsewhere and still received zero response. I thought it was a mistake and no-one would want to publish something of that length. So I put the manuscript in a drawer and forgot about it.”

That is until she decided to dust it off in February of this year and enter it in the 2017 Welsh Writing Awards.

Her self-belief paid off handsomely. It was long-listed, short-listed and then crowned as the winner of the Novella category at a Hay Festival ceremony on June 1.

Cath received an advance of £1000 and the book is now set to be published in 2018.

The winning writer explained, “I couldn’t believe it. It just goes to show, perseverance really does have its own reward.”

According to a spokesperson for the New Welsh Writing Awards, The Plankton Collector is, “a gentle pastiche of an idyllic world populated by archetypes who will help us heal and learn.”

Cath said, “It’s basically about a father, a mother and their children. One of the children dies and the Plankton Collector visits each of the family members in a different guise.

“To one he’s a gardener, to another he’s an old friend. He’s a different person to each member of this unhappy family.

“Throughout his visits, he talks to them, listens to them, and guides them through what happens and takes them to specific points in their lives

“He doesn’t help the family deny or forget what’s happened, but he helps them to understand and attain a measure of reconciliation in their lives.”

Cath adds, “They never know him as the Plankton Collector but without giving too much away it’s a symbolic name which becomes clear at the end of the book.”

Not one to rest on her laurels, Cath is already immersed in her next project which is a fictionalized biography of her Aunt Phyllis Allan, who was a leading light in both Bertram Mills and Billy Smart’s Circus.