MUM of three Joanna Campbell has won the local prize in the Bath Short Story Award for her work Fragments Left Behind.

Joanna, 52, who lives in Calf Way Lane, Bisley, only started writing five years ago when her youngest daughter Georgia was getting ready to start secondary school.

"After being a house wife and a mother for over 15 years I wanted to do something that I loved and was really passionate about," said Joanna, who has three daughters.

In the last five years Joanna has been longlisted and shortlisted in many acclaimed competitions and her work has appeared in a number of women’s magazines.

Recently however her story Fragments Left Behind made it on the shortlist for the Bath Short Story Award, and although she was not selected as the overall winner she was named the local prize winner.

"I was really thrilled when I found out I had won especially with this story as I had sent it to other competitions in the past and it didn’t even place," said Joanna.

"I really believed in the story and so I just kept tweaking it and now it has finally got some recognition."

The competition, which is in its first year, attracted over 1,000 entries from all over the world, with the local prize being awarded to the best entry from a Bath, Bristol, Gloucestershire or Swindon postcode.

"It’s always hard to think of being successful until you have a book of your own out there but so far everything has gone pretty well," added Joanna, who works from her home in Bisley while her husband Adrian works in his own study next door.

"It’s always great to have someone close t hand if my computer starts misbehaving and Adrian has always been really supportive of me."

Joanna is still waiting for results from a few other competitions she has entered and is currently working on a novel about an English family in the 1960’s who get separated in Berlin as a result of Cold War.