19 August 2022
Stephanie Sy-Quia and Emily Berry longlisted for Laurel Prize for Nature Poetry
The longlist for the £5,000 Laurel Prize has been announced featuring collections by Stephanie Sy-Quia and Emily Berry. Stephanie Sy-Quia is longlisted for her debut collection Amnion (Faber), a contemporary lyric epic, journeying from the Philippines to Libya, through France, Spain, and the UK, which questions the roots of migration and colonialism, charting what it means to grow up in a family divided by geography, history and language. Emily Berry is longlisted for her third collection, Unexhausted Time (Faber), which includes intimate poems that blur the boundaries between waking and dreaming, past and future.
Run by the Poetry School, the prize is funded by Poet Laureate Simon Armitage using his £5,000 honorarium from the Queen. It is awarded annually for the best published collection of environmental or nature poetry. The prize awards £5,000 to a winner, £2,000 for second prize and £1,000 for third. There is also £500 for Best First Collection. In addition, each of the winners will receive a commission from the Areas of Outstanding Beauty to create a poem based in their favourite landscape. The winners’ ceremony will take place at the Birmingham Hi...
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02 August 2022
Audrey Magee and Maddie Mortimer longlisted for 2022 Booker Prize
This year's Booker Prize longlist has been announced, and Audrey Magee and Maddie Mortimer are among the 13-strong longlist for the £50,000 award, dubbed the 'Booker Dozen.' Irish writer Audrey Magee is longlisted for her novel The Colony (Faber), which follows two men who arrive on a remote island off the west coast of Ireland. Judges said: “An idyllic island fishing community off the west coast becomes the laboratory in which Magee dissects the gulf between what Ireland is and how the rest of the world wants to fantasise it.” British writer Maddie Mortimer gets a nomination for her debut Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies (Picador), which centres on Lia and the shapeshifting malady that enters her body at the close of her life. It was praised by judges as "deliriously inventive and viscerally moving."
The shortlist of six books will be announced on 6th September at an evening event at the Serpentine Pavilion in London, with the overall winner announced on 17th October in an award ceremony held at the Roundhouse—and fully in-person for the first time since 2019.
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01 August 2022
Olga Ravn shortlisted for Ursula K. Le Guin Prize 2022
“Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom—poets, visionaries—realists of a larger reality.” —Ursula K. Le Guin
Olga Ravn’s novella The Employees (New Directions), translated into English by Martin Aitken, has been shortlisted for the inaugural Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction, awarded to a book-length work of imaginative fiction. The Employees is told in a series of reports made by the crew – human and otherwise – of an intergenerational, deep space ship, set in a world where productivity has subsumed everything else. There is only work, and what people find in or despite of it: curiosity, attachment to strange objects, and an unsettled relationship with their humanoid colleagues.
The shortlist for the prize includes a total of nine books, to be considered by a panel of five jurors for a cash prize of $25,000. The award is intended to recognize those writers Ursula spo...
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14 July 2022
Complicité to stage 'Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead'
The international touring company Complicité will present a new work for the theatre Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, directed by Simon McBurney. Based on Nobel Prize winning author Olga Tokarczuk's novel of the same name, which was translated into English in 2018 by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, the darkly comic, anarchic noir caused a seismic reaction in Olga Tokarczuk's native Poland due to its defiant attack on authoritarian structures, with right-wing press branding the writer an 'eco-terrorist' and national traitor. Drive Your Plow's story begins in the depths of winter in a small community where men from the local hunting club are dying in mysterious circumstances and Janina Duszejko - an eccentric 65 year-old local woman, ex-engineer, environmentalist, amateur astronomer and enthusiastic translator of William Blake - has been watching the animals with whom the community shares their isolated, rural home, and she believes they are acting strangely.
This work, supported by a pan-European network of co-producers, begins at Theatre Royal Plymouth (1-3 December 2022) ahead of a national opening - 24 January 2023 - and 3-week run at Bristol Old Vic. The prod...
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01 July 2022
Maddie Mortimer wins Desmond Elliott Prize 2022
Maddie Mortimer has won the 2022 Desmond Elliott Prize for her debut novel Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies (Picador). In addition to the £10,000 prize money, Mortimer — whose novel was inspired by her mother, who died of cancer in 2010, will receive tailored, year-round support and mentorship from the National Centre for Writing, which runs the Desmond Elliott Prize as part of its Early Career Awards portfolio.
Derek Owunsu said: "With Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies, Maddie Mortimer has penetrated the body and spirit of literature, taking an experience, one familiar to so many of us, and making it completely unique. The experimentation with language, form and ideas, offers us something that is precious and personal to each writer: human truth. It’s a courageous feat, and one executed with the wisdom of a sagacious observer. This is a book full of poetry and wonder, interior and exterior examination, sadness, though without the pessimism that sometimes accompanies it, love, and through all things, hope."
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24 June 2022
Susan Ogilvy longlisted for the James Cropper Wainwright Prize for Children's Writing on Nature & Conservation 2022
The longlists for the newly rebranded James Cropper Wainwright Prize for nature writing have been revealed which this year features a children’s prize for the first time. Susan Ogilvy is longlisted in the Children's Writing on Nature & Conservation category for Nests (Particular Books), which is a celebration of the architectural ingenuity of birds and contains Susan Ogilvy's exquisite portraits of 50 nests, reproduced at exactly life size. Each illustration is paired with a charming paragraph of information about each nest, the species that made it, and the circumstances of its discovery.
Now in its ninth year, the Nature Writing Prize judging panel is chaired by TV presenter Ray Mears. BBC Countryfile presenter Charlotte Smith is the chair of judges for the Conservation Prize. Following a multi-year commitment from the papermaker James Cropper, the prize announced last week it was taking on the sponsor’s name. Shortlists will be announced on 28th July and the winners’ announcement will be made live on 7th September at The London Wetland Centre. The three winners will share a prize fund of £7,500.
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23 June 2022
Femi Fadugba and Tanya Byrne shortlisted for YA Book Prize 2022
The YA Book Prize shortlist for 2022 has been revealed, and featured on the 10-strong shortlist are Femi Fadugba and Tanya Byrne. Femi Fadugba is shortlisted for his debut novel The Upper World (Penguin), a dual narrative sci-fi thriller following the story of a teenage boy, Esso, who can see glimpses of the future, and of a fostered girl, Rhia, fifteen years in the future, who is desperately seeking for answers about the past when her path crosses with Esso's; and Tanya Bryne for her fourth novel for a young adult audience - Afterlove (Hachette) - a gripping tale of first love with a supernatural twist, which follows the story of a teenage girl, Ash, who is killed in a car accident and must choose between becoming a Reaper gathering souls for the afterlife or seeing her first love Poppy again.
The YA Book Prize was launched in 2014 by The Bookseller to celebrate great books for teenagers and young adults written by authors resident in the UK and Ireland. Last year’s award went to Alice Oseman for her novel about a romance-obsessed teenager who realises that she is aromantic and asexual, Loveless (HarperCollins Children’s Books). The B...
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23 June 2022
Fuchsia Dunlop wins Guild of Food Writers Award 2022
Fuchisa Dunlop has been awarded the Guild of Food Writers Award in the Food Writers category for her work published in FT Weekend magazine and National Geographic Traveller Food magazine.
Judges commented: "This writer brings alive the many different aspects of foods from China in a unique and enlightening way. Extremely well researched pieces with historical, geographical and social insights that are intensively researched and engagingly written. The writing contains so much enthusiasm that at times the judges felt transported to the heart of the action."
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22 June 2022
Clare Jackson wins Wolfson History Prize 2022
Clare Jackson has been awarded the £50,000 Wolfson History Prize for Devil-Land: England Under Siege, 1588-1688 (Allen Lane). David Cannadine, chair of the Wolfson History Prize judges, said: “Devil-Land is a masterpiece of historical writing: a gripping book that brings to life the drama of 17th-Century England, a time of rebellion, regicide, and civil war. By looking at England from the perspective of European observers, Clare Jackson gives us a wider lens through which to view the period, helping us to see ourselves through the eyes of others. Devil-Land is a fitting winner of the Wolfson History Prize in this our 50th year, and we offer our warmest congratulations to Clare Jackson.’”
The Wolfson History Prize is awarded annually by the Wolfson Foundation to a work of historical non-fiction which combines excellence in research and writing, with readability for a general audience. To mark its anniversary, the prize fund was increased from £40,000 to £50,000 this year. Clare Jackson won from a shortlist featuring five other books, whose authors each won £5,000. The shortlist also featured Malcolm Gaskill’s The Ruin of All Witches: Life a...
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20 June 2022
James Robertson wins Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2022
James Robertson has won the £25,000 Walter Scott Prize for News of the Dead (Hamish Hamilton), a novel of "enduring appeal" set in in a fictional Scottish glen. James Robertson said, "Scott’s life and work have had an influence on my own writing. I don’t think of myself as a historical novelist, but as a writer with a deep interest in history and time. I’m speechless at winning this award."
The judging panel featured Elizabeth Buccleuch, James Holloway, Elizabeth Laird, James Naughtie, Kirsty Wark and chair Katie Grant. They said: "After twelve winners set outside the homeland of our prize’s namesake, Sir Walter Scott – from Malaysia and China to the USA, continental Europe, Ireland and England – it felt something of a homecoming to choose a book set in Scotland as our winner. In James Robertson’s masterful News Of The Dead, the fictional glen in which the novel is set frames lives through three different centuries exploring what is true, what we believe to be true and what we’d like to be true. [...] The novel fulfils in abundance the prize’s key criteria of ambition, originality, innovation, enduring appeal and quality of writing and we hope readers w...
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16 June 2022
RCW poets shortlisted for Forward Prizes for Poetry 2022
Poets including Helen Mort, Nick Laird, Shane McCrae, Stephanie Sy-Quia and Padraig Regan have been shortlisted for the 2022 Forward Prizes for Poetry across all four categories. Helen Mort and Shane McCrae are up for the £10,000 Forward Prize for Best Collection with their respective works The Illustrated Woman (Chatto & Windus) and Cain Named the Animal (Little, Brown); Padraig Regan and Stephanie Sy-Quia for the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection with their respective debuts Some Integrity (Carcanet) and Amnion (Granta); and Nick Laird in the final category for Best Single Poem with his individual poem "Up Late" (Granta).
The winners of this year’s Forward Prizes for Poetry will be announced on 28th November at a live event in the Contact Theatre in Manchester, marking the start of a new partnership with the venue.
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07 June 2022
Maddie Mortimer shortlisted for Desmond Elliott Prize 2022
Maddie Mortimer has been shortlisted for The Desmond Elliott Prize 2022, awarded to the most outstanding novel of the past 12 months. She is shortlisted for her debut novel of trauma and buried secrets, Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies (Picador), in which a sudden diagnosis upends Lia’s world and the boundaries between her past and her present begin to collapse. As the voice prowling in Lia takes hold of her story, the reader is taken on a symphonic journey through one woman’s body. Chair of Judges Derek Owusu said the book was “precocious, heart-breaking and stunningly innovative."
All three works shortlisted feature female protagonists “who have been dealt a difficult hand, from heartbreak to economic deprivation to a devastating medical diagnosis” said organisers the National Centre for Writing. The annual prize is given to the best debut novel written in English and published in the UK. The winners of all three awards will be announced on 1st July and all will benefit from a tailored programme of support from the National Centre for Writing, supported by Arts Council England.
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01 June 2022
Stephanie Sy-Quia Wins Two Prizes at the Society of Authors Awards 2022
The winners of this year's Society of Authors Awards have been revealed, and Stephanie Sy-Quia has won two prizes for her debut Amnion (Granta), a Somerset Maugham and an Eric Gregory award. Amnion is a contemporary lyric epic, journeying from the Philippines to Libya, through France, Spain, and the UK. This debut collection of poems questions keenly and urgently the roots of migration and colonialism, charting what it means to grow up in a family divided by geography, history and language.
W. Somerset Maugham set up a fund in 1947 to enable young writers to enrich their work by gaining experience of foreign countries, and the awards are given for a published work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry; the Eric Gregory Awards, awarded for a collection by poets under the age of 30, were founded in 1960 by the late Dr Eric Gregory for the encouragement of young poets.
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25 May 2022
Alice Zeniter and Frank Wynne win International Dublin Literary Award 2022
French author Alice Zeniter and Irish translator Frank Wynne have been announced as winners of the 2022 Dublin Literary Award, for the novel The Art of Losing (Picador). Deriving its title from the piercing first line of Elizabeth Bishop’s arch poem “One Art”, The Art of Losing follows three generations of an Algerian family from the 1950s to the present day—as they progressively lose, in the fog of conflict and post-colonial transition, their country, their roots, and their innocence. The narrative wings its way from the contested highlands of Northern Algeria to a French refugee camp, to the streets of Paris and back, borne forward by a cast of nuanced characters: from the patriarch Ali to his granddaughter Naïma, heir to a new digital age in which old prejudices and presumptions persist.
Judges commented: "Symphonic in historical and emotional scope, the novel is by turns infuriating, unflinching, wry, recalcitrant, sensual, aporetic, courageous. It offers insights at every scale, from the national and the individual, about the fluid nature of identity; how our relations to place and to each other situate and perhaps free us. Refusing easy answers, ...
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23 May 2022
Ian Rankin wins British Book Award for Crime & Thriller Book of the Year 2022
The winners for the British Book Awards 2022 have been revealed, and in Fiction: Crime & Thriller, The Dark Remains written by William McIlvanney and Ian Rankin took the award for "seamlessly blending the two voices and delivering an extraordinary publishing story." William McIlvanney's Laidlaw books changed the face of crime fiction, and when he died in 2015, he left half a handwritten manuscript of Laidlaw's first case. The series proved an immense inspiration to Ian Rankin and he has now completed his idol’s last, unfinished novel - and Laidlaw's origin story - in reverent yet typically compelling prose.
The British Book Awards, aka The Nibbies, represent the absolute best of the book trade, showcasing the books, bookshops, agents and publishers. This year’s celebrations returned to Grosvenor House London on 23rd May 2022 and a post-awards highlights show will be available to watch for free on Fane TV from 29th May.
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20 May 2022
Alice Oseman's ‘Heartstopper’ Renewed for Two More Seasons at Netflix
Heartstopper fans, rejoice: Nick and Charlie will be back for a second and third season of the hit Netflix show based on the graphic novels, and Alice Oseman will return as writer and creator.
Heartstopper has been a critical and audience hit since launching on the platform on April 22, reaching Netflix’s Top Ten list in 54 countries. Sales of Alice Oseman's works have also increased exponentially since the premiere of the adaptation on Netflix, propelling the first volume in the original graphic novel series to number one on the official UK Children's bestseller charts and volumes two, three and four into the top ten as well, and Heartstopper Vol 1 is also sitting at number eight on the New York Times bestseller list this week.
That’s also been clear on social media, where the series flew to the top of Variety’s Trending TV chart in the week of its release with 1.05 million engagements on Twitter. Over the last four weeks it has remained at the top of the chart. The hashtag #Heartstopper has also amassed over 4.3B views on TikTok.
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18 May 2022
Announcing the DRF David Miller Internship Programme for 2022 in partnership with Creative Access
The DRF David Miller Bursary, currently awarded to a developing rights professional already working in the business, is to be refocused on creating entry pathways for people from groups under-represented in the sector, in partnership with Creative Access, a leading social enterprise specialised in diversity, equity and inclusion.
The biennial award will be renamed the DRF David Miller Internship Programme and with its educational brief will support two paid internships over a 6-week period.
The programme will offer an entry level introduction to rights and agenting in publishing companies and literary agencies, providing a full understanding of the role of rights professionals within the wider industry. This will be achieved through first-hand experience and intensive training, with the specific aim of providing a significant steppingstone to the successful candidates in their search for future employment. Their educational schedule will include involvement with The Frankfurt Book Fair in October, the key yearly rights event. The two interns will be given mentoring and guidance throughout their placements.
Payment will be made in two stages, based on th...
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18 May 2022
Kojo Koram and Audrey Magee shortlisted for Orwell Prize 2022
The Orwell Prize finalists have been unveiled and titles by Kojo Koram and Audrey Magee have been shortlisted for the two book prizes. For the Political Writing Prize, Kojo Koram is selected for his work on Uncommon Wealth (John Murray), which shines a light on Britain's cynical self-interest in the aftermath of decolonisation and the hitherto neglected financial scandals that allowed the nation's establishment to profit from the poverty of their former dependencies. For the Political Fiction Prize, Audrey Magee is shortlisted for her novel The Colony (Faber), which is about two men who arrive on a remote island attempting to capture its essence but the islanders themselves have their own views on the visitors' actions.
Each prize is worth £3,000 and will be presented to the winner at a ceremony closing the Orwell Festival of Political Writing on 14th July. The finalists will all be invited to take part in the festival, taking place from 22nd June to 14th July.
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16 May 2022
Kazuo Ishiguro, Hannah Gold and Ross Montgomery shortlisted for Indie Book Awards 2022
Titles by Kazuo Ishiguro, Hannah Gold and Ross Montgomery have been shortlisted for the Indie Book Awards 2022, which recognise the best paperbacks for summer as part of Independent Bookshop Week. Kazuo Ishiguro is shortlisted in the fiction category for his Booker-longlisted novel Klara and the Sun (Faber), which explores the implications of AI for human relationships and the question of what it means to love. In children’s, Hannah Gold's Waterstones Children's Book Prize and Blue Peter Award-winning The Last Bear, illustrated by Levi Pinfold (HarperCollins Children’s Books), is nominated alongside Ross Montgomery's heart-stopping adventure and entrancing story of faeries, changelings, The Chime Seekers (Walker).
Four winners will be announced on Friday 24th June, the penultimate day of Independent Bookshop Week, which runs from the 18th to 25th June. The winners will be announced live on the Mark Forrest show, which airs from 10am on Scala Radio, and is the media partner of the awards.
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16 May 2022
Abir Mukherjee & Rahul Raina shortlisted for CWA Daggers 2022
Abir Mukherjee and Rahul Raina are among those shortlisted for the 2022 Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) Dagger awards. For the Gold Dagger, which is awarded for the crime novel of the year, Abir Mukherjee is shortlisted for The Shadows of Men (Harvill Secker), the fifth instalment in his bestselling Wyndham and Banerjee series following the killing of a Hindu theologian in Calcutta which sets the city ablaze with religious and political conflict. For the John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger, which is awarded for the best crime novel by a first-time author, Rahul Raina is shortlisted for How to Kidnap the Rich (Little, Brown), a thought-provoking satirical thriller about two wealthy young kidnap victims in Delhi who easily turn the tables on their captors and decide to get into the game themselves.
The Dagger awards ceremony will be held at the Leonardo City hotel in London on 29th June, coinciding with National Crime Reading Month, which takes place throughout June. Tickets are available now from the CWA.
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