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Prizes

International literary prizes flourishing

12 June 2017

The announcement of the winner of the Man Booker International Prize this week highlights again the growing importance of literary prizes in the international book world.  Read more

Costa Short Story Award open to public vote

5 December 2016

It's a measure of the growing interest in short stories, amongst both writers and readers, that Costa launched its short story prize in 2012 and that the public is currently invited to read and listen to the shortlisted stories selected from over 1,000 entries on the Costa Book Awards website, and to take part in the public vote.  Read more

'A novel that is recklessly, scabrously funny, politically of-the-moment and hugely erudite'

24 October 2016

This year's Booker result raises so many interesting issues that a longer report on Frankfurt, the Book Fair and other issues relating to international publishing will come next week. The links this week give a clue to the many themes that Paul Beatty's win with The Sellout has raised.  Read more

'A major literary figure of the next generation'

27 June 2016

Sometimes an author seems to step new-minted into bestsellerdom and, even rarer, literary acclaim. Lisa McInerney is such a writer and her winning of the Bailey Prize earlier in the month, followed by the Desmond Elliott Prize this week, marks a remarkable debut.  Read more

All shall have prizes

22 February 2016

Nick Clee asks in this week's Bookbrunch if you need to transcend a prize to win it, inspired by the Costa win by Frances Hardinge's children's book.  Read more

Man Booker goes to stunning (and persistent) Jamaican Marlon James

12 October 2015

This week's story was to have been on the rise in support for short stories, until, that is, Marlon James had his stunning Man Booker Prize win last night.  Read more

A 'diverse and international' Man Booker longlist

3 August 2015

The longlist for this year's Man Booker Prize is both diverse and international, with a wide range of different kinds of writers and a number of debuts. The longlist features three British writers, five US writers and one each from the Republic of Ireland, New Zealand, India, Nigeria and Jamaica.  Read more

Success at last! An author's story

29 June 2015

When John Spurling won the £25,000 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction recently with The Ten Thousand Things it was much more than a good win against a formidable shortlist, which included Martin Amis, Helen Dunmore, Adam Foulds and Kamila Shamsie.  Read more

Prizes, prizes and competitions

3 November 2014

The growth of literary prizes of one kind and another seems unending, although it's a pity from the point of view of unpublished writers that so many of them are restricted to books which have come from traditional publishers.  Read more

Surprise win for Bailey Women's Prize

9 June 2014

Eimear McBride's A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing is having an extraordinary impact. Now that it's won the new Bailey Women's Prize (successor to last year's Women's Fiction Prize and the Orange Prize), there seems to be no stopping the author.  Read more

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10 January 2022 - What's new

January 2022
  • ‘If there is anything I believe to be foundational to the business of writing then it is this: writing is work. To frame it in this way is to acknowledge that good writing doesn't come out, fully formed, at two in the morning; and nor does it require anything extraordinary in the way of genius or education, although of course it's possible to have an aptitude for it, and reading helps.
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