Hamish MacNeil

Hamish MacNeil has been a poet and short story writer for many years under the pseudonym Macaque, and a member of Writers in Stone alongside Lois Elsden, Fenja Hill, Brian Price and Simon Phelps. Before the pandemic, he was active at open mic and spoken word events around Somerset and Bristol, and has had poetry and prose commended in The Wells International Short Story Competition, The Watchet Poetry Competition, and the Burnham Book Festival competitions three years running, winning the short story competition in 2024.

Being a key worker, he spent lockdown isolated from his four children, and during the times when he would normally have been taking them to football, karate, swimming or scouts, he decided to write them into a story as a way of connecting with them and feeling close to them.

The result was The Strange Discoveries at Wimblestone Road, a re-imagining of their move to Somerset in 2013, with many recognizable features of the local villages and landscape, and a few fantasy elements thrown in. The story had presented itself almost immediately upon moving to the area, but remained a collection of ever swirling ideas in his mind until the opportunity to write it materialized in 2020.

Hamish has published collections of his poetry and short stories, and the Writers in Stone have published six anthologies of their combined work, all available on amazon. He has just finished a draft of a new children's novel, and is also working on another collection of Poems.