New Writing

Eliza Robertson wins Commonwealth Short Story Prize (Canada & Europe)

danielleeson — Wed, 15 May 2013 09:29:45 +0000

Recent UEA graduate Eliza Robertson has won the 2013 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for the Canada & Europe region. Her story ‘We Walked On Water’ is now in contention for the overall Commonwealth Short Story Prize, along with the winners of the Africa, Asia, Caribbean and Pacific regions. The prize is awarded for the best piece of original unpublished short fiction and the overall winner receives £5,000 while the regional winners each receive £1,000. Eliza (pictured) was born in Vancouver, Canada, and studied creative writing and political science at the University of Victoria, before joining UEA, where she was the recipient of the Man Booker Scholarship. She graduated from the MA in Creative Writing (Prose Fiction) in 2012, and was awarded the Curtis Brown Prize for best dissertation. In Canada she has won three national fiction contests and has been twice longlisted for the Journey Prize. Most recently, she was a finalist for the 2013 CBC Short Story Prize.

Sally Campbell and Krishan Coupland shortlisted for Tibor Jones Pageturner Prize

danielleeson — Tue, 14 May 2013 10:00:36 +0000

Debut novels by two UEA writers have been included in the shortlist of five titles for the Tibor Jones Pageturner Prize for currently unrepresented novelists. Sally Campbell graduated from the MA in Creative Writing (Prose Fiction) in 2010 and is nominated for her novel ‘Burnt Island’. Krishan Coupland is a current student on the Creative Writing MA and is nominated for his young adult novel ‘You Must Be Charlie’s Brother’. Earlier this year Krishan (pictured) was second in the Poetry Book Society Student Poetry Competition, and in 2011 he was the winner of the Manchester Fiction Prize. Launched in 2011, the Tibor Jones Pageturner Prize is worth £1,000 to the winner, who will be announced next month. The judges include Sophie Lambert, a literary agent at Conville & Walsh, and the novelist Evie Wyld.

Marathon by Claire Powell on Radio 4

danielleeson — Mon, 13 May 2013 10:00:53 +0000

‘Marathon’, a new short story by UEA alumna Claire Powell, is to be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 this coming Sunday, 19th May, at 19.45. Claire (pictured) graduated from the MA in Creative Writing (Prose Fiction) in 2012 and was awarded both the Malcolm Bradbury Memorial Bursary and the Malcolm Bradbury Continuation Grant for best performance on the MA. Her stories have previously been published in Untitled Books and The Manchester Review. ‘Marathon’ is being broadcast as part of the latest season of The Time Being, a showcase for new voices on the radio, which previously featured UEA gradaute Joe Dunthorne.

Meadhbh Ní Eadhra wins The Moth Short Story Prize

danielleeson — Sun, 12 May 2013 10:00:27 +0000

‘Ghosties’, a short story by current UEA Creative Writing student Meadhbh Ní Eadhra, has won this year’s The Moth Short Story Prize, judged by novelist and poet Martina Evans. The prize is worth €1,000. Meadhbh (pictured) is from Galway and is the author of two award-winning Irish language books for young people, ‘Rua’ and ‘Fáinne Fí Fífí’. She is currently enrolled on the MA in Creative Writing (Prose Fiction) at UEA. Her story will be published in the summer
issue of The Moth, whose website can be found here.

‘Goldfish’ by Jennifer Wong

danielleeson — Sat, 11 May 2013 10:00:50 +0000

‘Goldfish’ is the new collection of poetry by UEA alumna Jennifer Wong and has recently been published by Chameleon Press. Jennifer (pictured) was born in Hong Kong and has taught creative writing at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. In 2012 she was writer-in-residence at Lingnan University and represented Hong Kong at the Poetry Parnassus Festival at London’s Southbank Centre. She graduated from the MA in Creative Writing (Poetry) at UEA in 2009, having
published her first collection ‘Summer Cicadas’, also with Chameleon, in 2006. Her poems have been published widely in journals, and selected for anthologies including ‘World Record’ edited by Neil Astley and Anna Selby (Bloodaxe 2012), ‘Asian Writing in English’ edited by Agnes Lam (HKU), and ‘Lung Jazz: Young British Poets for Oxfam’ edited by Todd Swift and Kim Lockwood (Cinnamon Press 2012).

George Szirtes wins Best Translated Book Award

danielleeson — Tue, 07 May 2013 12:36:57 +0000

UEA Reader in Poetry, George Szirtes, has won this year’s Best Translated Book Award for his translation from the Hungarian of László Krasznahorkai’s novel ‘Satantango’, which is published by Atlantic in the UK and New Directions in the USA. The award is worth $5,000 and was announced at the PEN World Voices Festival in New York on Friday. Last month George (pictured) also won the CLPE Poetry Award for his book of poems for children ‘In The Land of Giants’. His first collection of poetry ‘The Slant Door’ Faber Memorial Prize in 1979, while his 2005 collection ‘Reel’ won the 2005 T.S. Eliot Prize. ’Song’ was the winner of the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Single Poem) in 2009. His previous awards for translation include The European Poetry Translation Prize, the Dery Prize, the Pro Cultura Hungaria medal and the Gold Star of the Hungarian Republic.

Edward Hogan shortlisted for the Branford Boase Award

danielleeson — Tue, 07 May 2013 09:47:56 +0000

‘Daylight Saving’ by UEA alumnus Edward Hogan has been shortlisted for the 2013 Branford Boase Award for the best debut children’s novel. The award is worth £1,000 and this year’s chair of judges is the Guardian’s children’s books editor Julia Eccleshare. The winner will be announced on 11th July at a ceremony in London. Edward (pictured) graduated from the MA in Creative Writing (Prose Fiction) in 2004. His first novel, ‘Blackmoor’ (2008), was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award and the Dylan Thomas Prize and won the Desmond Elliot Prize. ‘The Hunger Trace’ (2011) was shortlisted for both the Encore Award and the Portico Prize. ‘Daylight Saving’ is currently also shortlisted for the 14-16 category of the Leeds Book Awards.

‘The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure’ by CD Rose

danielleeson — Sat, 04 May 2013 09:19:41 +0000

‘The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure’ is the first book by UEA Creative Writing graduate, CD (Chris) Rose, and is to be published by Melville House in both the UK and the USA next year. Chris (pictured) graduated from the UEA Creative Writing MA (Prose Fiction) in 2007 and was shortlisted earlier this year for the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award for ‘Arkady Who Couldn’t See And Artem Who Couldn’t Hear’. He has published numerous other short stories since graduation, most recently ‘A Publisher Surveys the Changing Literary Scene’ in the collection ‘Unthology 3’, and is currently working on a PhD in the short story at Edge Hill University. ‘The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure’ contains fifty-two short biographies of writers who leave their manuscripts on trains, set them on fire, or are never recognized for their genius, based on a blog of the same name.

Jean McNeil shortlisted for Canadian National Magazine

danielleeson — Fri, 03 May 2013 08:58:36 +0000

UEA Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, Jean McNeil, has been nominated for the 2013 Canadian National Magazine Awards for ‘Ice Diaries: a Climate Change Memoir’. Jean (pictured) is the author of ten books of fiction, travel, literature and poetry, most recently the novel ‘The Ice Lovers’, which is set in the Antarctic. Her work has been shortlisted for several major international awards, including the Governor-General’s Prize (Canada), and in 2005 she was awarded a fellowship to join the British Antarctic Survey as a writer-in-residence. She is the co-convenor of UEA’s Creative Writing MA (Prose Fiction). Her shortlisted essay was previously awarded the 2012 Prism International Prize for Creative Non-Fiction and was nominated for a 2012 Pushcart Prize (USA and Canada). Another essay ‘The Skeleton Coast’ was a finalist for the Prism International Creative Non-Fiction Award in 2013.

‘A Place In The Country’ by W.G. Sebald

danielleeson — Thu, 02 May 2013 14:34:03 +0000

‘A Place In The Country’ is a newly translated collection of essays by the late W.G. Sebald and is published today by Hamish Hamilton. Sebald (pictured) joined UEA in 1970 as a lecturer in German Literature and became Professor of European Literature in 1987. He was a founding Director of the British Centre for Literary Translation (BCLT) in 1989 and taught on the MA in Creative Writing from the mid-1990s until his death in a car crash in 2001, aged 57. Until he emerged as an internationally significant novelist with the publication of ‘The Emigrants’ in 1996, he was known principally as a scholar of German and particularly Austrian literature. His other highly acclaimed and influential novels are ‘Rings of Saturn’ (1999), ‘Vertigo’ (2000) and ‘Austerlitz’ (2001). ‘A Place In The Country’ is translated by his former colleague and UEA Senior Lecturer in Literature, Jo Catling.