06 March 2024
Emily Perkins shortlisted for Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction
Emily Perkins's novel Lioness (Bloomsbury) is shortlisted for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction, as finalists in the 2024 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards are announced. The book explores the reality behind the facade in a seductive story of power, privilege and personal rebellion. Emily Perkins previously won the Montana Medal for Fiction or Poetry in 2009 for Novel About My Wife.
The 16 finalists were selected from a longlist of 44 books by panels of specialist judges across four categories: fiction, poetry, illustrated non-fiction, and general non-fiction.
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06 March 2024
Anne Enright and Isabella Hammad longlisted for Women's Prize for Fiction 2024
Anne Enright and Isabella Hammad are among the writers longlisted for this year’s Women’s prize for fiction. Irish author Anne Enright, who has been shortlisted for the prize twice, was longlisted a fifth time for The Wren, The Wren (Jonathan Cape), while British-Palestinian writer Hammad is longlisted for Enter Ghost (Vintage), which is about a production of Hamlet in the West Bank.
A shortlist of six titles will be announced on 24 April, and the winner will be announced on 13 June, along with the winner of the inaugural Women’s prize for non-fiction. The winning author will receive a cheque for £30,000 and a bronze statuette known as the “Bessie”, created by the artist Grizel Niven.
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27 February 2024
Tom Crewe, Victoria MacKenzie and Zadie Smith longlisted for Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2024
Zadie Smith’s The Fraud (Hamish Hamilton), Tom Crewe’s The New Life (Chatto & Windus) and Victoria MacKenzie’s For Thy Great Pain, Have Mercy On My Little Pain (Bloomsbury) are among the books longlisted for the 2024 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction.
Honouring the achievements of the founding father of the historical novel, the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction is one of the UK’s most prestigious literary prizes. The winner receives £25,000 and shortlisted authors each receive £1,500. Since it was founded fifteen years ago by the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch, the Prize has awarded nearly £400,000 to writers and brought over 150 great novels to wider public attention.
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27 February 2024
Wiz Wharton and Tom Crewe longlisted for the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award 2024
Tom Crewe's The New Life (Vintage) and Wiz Wharton's Ghost Girl, Banana (Hodder & Stoughton) are among those longlisted for the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award, now in its 70th year.
The shortlist will be announced on 25th March with an event for shortlisted writers at the National Liberal Club in London on 24th April. The winner will be announced at a dinner at the National Liberal Club on 22nd May. Inaugurated in 1954, the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award is now in its 70th year, making it the longest-running UK prize for debut fiction and – except for the James Tait Black and the Hawthornden – the oldest literary prize in Britain.
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27 February 2024
Tom Crewe and Noreen Masud shortlisted for Young Writer of the Year Award 2024
Tom Crewe and Noreen Masud have been shortlisted for Young Writer of the Year Award 2024. Tom Crewe is in the running for his debut about "19th-Century forbidden desire", The New Life (Vintage), which won the 2023 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and the South Bank Sky Arts Award for Literature, and was shortlisted for the Polari First Book Prize. Noreen Masud is competing for the award with her "raw and radical" autobiography, A Flat Place (Hamish Hamilton), which is also longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction 2024.
The Charlotte Aitken Trust has increased the prize sum to £10,000. Each shortlistee also receives £1,000. The winner will be announced in a ceremony at Canova Hall in Brixton, London, on 19th March 2024.
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15 February 2024
Cat Bohannon and Noreen Masud longlisted for Women's Prize for Non-Fiction 2024
Sixteen women – including Cat Bohannon and Noreen Masud – are in the running for the inaugral Women's Prize for Non-Fiction, launched to redress the relatively low numbers of women recognised in nonfiction prizes. Cat Bohannon is longlisted for Eve (Hutchinson Heinemann) and Noreen Masud for her debut A Flat Place (Hamish Hamilton).
The launch of the nonfiction prize came in the wake of research commissioned by the Women’s prize that found that only 35% of books awarded a nonfiction prize over the past 10 years were written by women, across seven UK nonfiction prizes. The Prize will be awarded annually and is open to all women writers from across the globe who are published in the UK and writing in English. The winner receives a cheque for £30,000 and a limited-edition artwork known as the ‘Charlotte’, both gifted by the Charlotte Aitken Trust.
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08 February 2024
Pari Thomson and G.M. Linton shortlisted for Waterstones Children's Book Prize 2024
Pari Thomson and G.M. Linton have been shortlisted for the £5,000 Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, which is voted for by booksellers. In the Younger Readers category, G M Linton's "gently funny" My Name Is Sunshine Simpson (Usborne Publishing) is shortlisted this year, alongside Pari Thomson’s "immersive fantasy" magical-door adventure, Greenwild (Pan Macmillan).
The shortlists comprise 18 books across three categories, with six books vying within each category to be crowned category winner. Three category winners will then compete for the overall title of Waterstones Children’s Book Prize Winner 2024. The winner of each category will receive £2,000, with the overall winner receiving an extra £3,000.
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08 February 2024
Casting news for Taika Waititi's feautre adaptation of 'Klara and the Sun' by Kazuo Ishiguro
Jenna Ortega and Amy Adams are set to star in the feautre adaptation of Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, with newcomers Mia Tharia and Aran Murphy joining the cast. In its March 2021 publication by Alfred A. Knopf in the U.S. and Faber in the UK, the book debuted on the New York Times’ Best Sellers Hardcover Fiction List at #3 and the Indie Best Sellers Hardcover Fiction List at #1.
Adapted by screenwriter Dahvi Waller, the film tells the story of Klara (Jenna Ortega), an Artificial Friend designed to prevent loneliness. Klara is purchased by a mother (Amy Adams) and a bright teen named Josie (Mia Tharia) who adores her new robot companion, but suffers from a mysterious illness. This is the story of Klara’s quest to save Josie and those who love her from heartbreak and how in the process Klara learns the power of human love. Aran Murphy makes his feature film debut as Rick, Josie’s best friend and next-door neighbor.
Taika Waititi has been attached to the project since the spring, and Kazuo Ishiguro is serving as an executive producer. Producers of the film adaptation are Heyday Films’ David Heyman, Garrett Basch, and Waititi.
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30 January 2024
Paul Murray wins Nero Book Award in fiction category
The freshly launched Nero Book Awards celebrate books and writers from the UK and Ireland published in the past 12 months across four categories: children’s fiction, debut fiction, fiction and non-fiction. Of these four category winners, one book will be selected as the overall winner and recipient of the Nero Gold Prize Book of the Year, to be announced at a ceremony in London on 14th March.
Paul Murray has won the fiction category for his fourth novel, The Bee Sting (Hamish Hamilton), the latest in a string of prize nods including a Booker shortlisting, an An Post Irish Book of the Year 2023 win and a nomination for The Writer’s Prize 2024. At 650 pages, the novel took five years to complete and tells the story of a middle-class Irish family in turmoil, as the effects of the post-2008 banking crisis take their toll. Judges said: "Hilarious and tragic in equal measure, The Bee Sting is a gripping saga of one highly dysfunctional family that asks if a single moment of bad luck – a patch of ice on the road, a bee caught beneath a bridal veil, can change the direction of a life?"
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29 January 2024
Ian Rankin shortlisted for 2024 Edgar Award
'The Rise' by Ian Rankin has been nominated for an Edgar Award for Best Short Story. Amazon Publishing acquired Ian's standalone short thriller for its Amazon Original Stories imprint, which publishes single-sitting reads from bestselling authors, acclaimed storytellers and new voices.
'The Rise' tells the story of the suspicion that ensues when a nightwatchman is found slain in the entrance lobby of a new steel-and-glass residential tower in London. Amazon Original Stories are available to Kindle Unlimited subscribers and Prime members. Amazon said the imprint aims to offer the opportunity for authors to step outside of the formats or genres they’re known for and connect with new readers.
Click here for the full list of nominations.
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18 January 2024
RCW acquires Caroline Sheldon Literary Agency
RCW is delighted to announce the acquisition of the Caroline Sheldon Literary Agency. Caroline will continue to be closely involved, still representing a number of CSLA authors, meanwhile the promotion of Millie van Grutten to agent marks the beginning of a new illustrated children’s book division for RCW.
Film and television rights for CSLA clients will be under the continued care of Emily Hayward Whitlock at The Artist's Partnership.
Caroline Sheldon said: "Forty years after first founding CSLA, my priority remains the continuing success and happiness of CSLA’s talented and inspirational authors and illustrators.
"Nothing will give me more pleasure than to see their careers grow at RCW, benefitting from our respective strengths for the years to come. Also, I am so much looking forward with excitement to the prospect of working alongside my new RCW colleagues."
Claire Wilson, head of RCW children’s, said: "To welcome CSLA into the RCW fold is an extraordinary privilege. I have long admired the exceptional list of clients represented by Caroline and Millie, and all of their phenomenal work.
"Caroline is an industry legend – famous fo...
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18 January 2024
Sebastian Barry and Tine Høeg among 70-strong longlist for Dublin Literary Award
Sebastian Barry's Old God's Time (Faber) and Tine Høeg's Memorial, 29 June (Lolli Editions), translated by Misha Hoekstra, are the UK titles longlisted by libraries around the world for the €100,000 (£86,000) Dublin Literary Award, sponsored by Dublin City Council.
Now in its 29th year, this award is the world’s most valuable annual prize for a single work of fiction published in English. The longlist for the 2024 award features books nominated by 80 libraries from 35 countries.
This year’s panel of judges features author and journalist Irenosen Okojie, professor Daniel Medin, associate professor Lucy Collins, RCW author and translator Anton Hur and poet Ingunn Snædal, who is also a translator. The non-voting chairperson is professor Chris Morash, the Seamus Heaney professor of Irish writing at Trinity College Dublin.
The full longlist can be found here.
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18 January 2024
Poor Things lauded with two Golden Globe wins and Critics’ Choice Award win
The big screen adaptation of Alasdair Gray’s 1992 novel Poor Things has had a strong start to awards season. Poor Things won Best Motion Picture in the Musical or Comedy category at the Golden Globes, whilst Emma Stone’s rapturous performance as Bella Baxter took home Best Female Actor in a Musical or Comedy film.
Emma Stone has also won the Critics’ Choice Award in the Best Actress category. According to the five-star review from the Guardian this week, Emma Stone ‘transfixes in Yorgos Lanthimos’s thrilling carnival of oddness.’ Full article available here.
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09 January 2024
Victoria MacKenzie wins The Saltire Society First Book of the Year Award 2023
The Saltire Society announced the winners of 2023 Scotland’s National Book Awards, and The Saltire Society First Book of the Year Award awarded to Victoria MacKenzie for her book For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy on my Little Pain (published by Bloomsbury Publishing Inc). The Judging panel called it. “Sublime is the only word that could be used to describe this book. It sets itself apart by the both the unusualness of its story (God, visions, the rejection of a regular life) and the quality of its telling. At some points, with its condensed, accurate language and sense of beauty, it veered close to poetry.”
Scotland’s National Book Awards have been awarded by the Saltire Society since 1937. All entrants must be born in Scotland, live in Scotland or their books must be about Scotland. The winner of each category receives a bespoke Award created by Inverness-based artist Simon Baker of Evergreen Studios and the winners of the Literary Awards each receive a cash prize of £2,000 with the winner of the Saltire Society Book of the Year receiving a further £4,000.
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08 January 2024
Jon Ronson returns in BBC Radio 4’s Things Fell Apart
Launching as a box set on BBC Sounds on Tuesday 9 January, the award-winning podcast Things Fell Apart returns, with acclaimed writer and broadcaster Jon Ronson revealing eight more wholly unexpected but all too human stories about the culture wars that divide us so toxically today.
In Season 2, Jon Ronson uncovers eight jaw-dropping, thought provoking, and sometimes darkly funny stories about many of the new battle lines in the culture wars which snowballed during lockdown and dominate society now: from covid conspiracies and Antifa hysteria, to racial and gender identity politics, free speech and protests against lockdown that spiralled out of control.
While each episode is a gripping listen, the series also illuminates one of the most turbulent and traumatic times in our recent history. Released at the start of a US election year and set against a political climate in the UK which can sometimes seem defined by culture wars issues, Things Fell Apart will be a vital primer on the new battlefronts of a phenomenon that we all need to understand.
Jon Ronson says: “A connection between these stories is untruths and their consequences. In every episode, someo...
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13 December 2023
'Poor Things': Alasdair Gray adaptation scores Golden Globe and Critics Choice Award nominations
The big screen adaptation of Alasdair Gray’s 1992 novel Poor Things has recieved seven nomiations at the 2024 Golden Globes. It has been nominated for Best Film - Musical or Comedy, Best Screenplay and Best Original Score, with Yorgos Lanthimos also nominated for Best Director.
Emma Stone’s performance is also nominated for Best Female Actor in a film – Musical or Comedy, with co-stars Willem Dafoe and Mark Ruffalo also receiving Best Supporting Actor nominations for their performances.
Poor Things has also been nominated for 13 Critics Choice Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor.
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07 December 2023
Paul Murray named winner of the overall An Post Irish Book of the Year 2023
Paul Murray’s The Bee Sting (Hamish Hamilton) has been named the winner of the overall An Post Irish Book of the Year 2023. The book was among six shortlisted titles competing for the accolade, all of which were category winners at the A Post Irish Book Awards. Paul Murray’s book also won the Eason Novel of the Year.
Paul was revealed as the overall winner during a one-hour television special on RTÉ One hosted by Oliver Callan. Madeleine Keane, chair of the judging panel, said: "The Bee Sting was the judges’ unanimous choice as the An Post Book of the Year. Paul Murray is an exceptional contemporary Irish novelist as evidenced in his fine body of work, culminating in this dazzling achievement. The Bee Sting is a bravura feat — a wildly funny, tragic giant of a novel with a symphony of compelling voices. Murray evokes Ireland’s complexities and vagaries while taking in vital universal themes of love, greed, desire and disappointment. Along with my fellow judges, I am very proud to see it crowned the most outstanding book of 2023."
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30 November 2023
Katherine Rundell wins Waterstones Book of the Year Prize for 2023
Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell (Bloomsbury) has been named the 2023 Waterstones book of the year. The children’s novel, about a magical archipelago where all mythical creatures still reside, was voted for by booksellers as the book they most enjoyed recommending to readers over the past year.
Katherine Rundell said: "The fact that this book has won rather than any of my others is so thrilling because this, in being a children’s book that I hope could also be read by adults, is the book that I hope could speak to everyone. It has the best of everything that I’ve learned and that I’ve read and all of the scholarship I’ve come across in the last 15 years of my working life, and a kind of distillation of everything I know and hope."
Bea Carvalho, Head of Books, said: "This is as close to perfect as fiction gets: immaculate world-building, dazzling storytelling, and adventure galore. Rundell isn't afraid to trust young readers with weighty themes, but never loses sight of the need to make reading joyous and fun, celebrating humour with as much care as awe and wonder. It is an immediate classic which children will delight in for years to come, and w...
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30 November 2023
Sebastian Barry and Tom Crewe win awards in France
Sebastian Barry and Tom Crewe have been honored with awards in France. Sebastian Barry received the 2023 Le jury du Prix du meilleur livre étranger, recognizing the best foreign book in France, for his novel Old God's Time, published in French by Gallimard as "Au bon vieux temps de Dieu" and translated from English by Laëtitia Devaux. Tom Crewe has won the Prix du Premier Roman Etranger, recognizing the best debut foreign language novel, for The New Life, published in French by Christian Bourgois as "La Vie nouvelle," and translated from English by Etienne Gomez.
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30 November 2023
Julia Armfield wins Polari Prize 2023
Julia Armfield's debut novel Our Wives Under the Sea (Picador) was named winner of the overall Polari prize for 2023. Our Wives Under the Sea (Picador) tells the story of Leah, who unexpectedly returns from a disastrous deep-sea dive, and her wife, Miri, who grapples with the ways Leah changed while under water. The novel “opens up what we believe is possible from queer writing,” said judge Joelle Taylor, who won last year’s prize for C+nto & Othered Poems, which explores butch lesbian counterculture in London. “It is a strange, speculative, poetic and thrilling novel – a heart turner as much as a page turner.”
Organisers said: “This year, both winning titles explore complex landscapes and elusive narratives that ask the reader to imagine all possibilities, build new stories and inspire hope; expanding on what LGBTQ+ literature can be.”
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