New Writing

A quarter of the nominees for this year’s £30,000 Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story are graduates of the UEA Creative Writing MA.  Chosen from over 500 entries, the longlist includes stories by Toby Litt, Adam Foulds, Mark McNay and CD Rose.  Toby Litt, who graduated from the MA in 1995, is selected for ‘Call it “The Bug” Because I Have No Time to Think of a Better Title’.  He is the author of nine novels and two collections of stories and was also longlisted for the award last year.  Adam Foulds, who graduated in 2000, is nominated for ‘Tunnelling’.  His first novel, ‘The Truth About These Strange Times’ (2007) won the Betty Trask Award and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award.  ‘The Broken Word’ (2008) was the winner of the Costa Poetry Award, the Jerwood Aldeburgh Prize and the Somerset Maugham Award, while  ‘The Quickening Maze’ (2009) won the Encore Award, the European Union Literature Prize and the South Bank Show Literature Prize.  Mark McNay (pictured) graduated in 2004 and is nominated for ‘Ten Years Too Late’.  His first novel ‘Fresh’ (2007) won the Arts Foundation Prize for New Fiction and was shortlisted for three other literary awards, while ‘Under Control’ (2008) was shortlisted for the Aye Write! Bank of Scotland Prize for Scottish Fiction.  CD Rose graduated in 2007 is shortlisted for ‘Arkady Who Couldn’t See And Artem Who Couldn’t Hear’.  He has published numerous 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.  Also nominated are Ali Smith, currently a visiting professor at UEA, and Graham Swift, who was appointed as a Distinguished Writing Fellow at UEA in 2008.  The shortlist for the award will be announced on 24 February, and the winner at The Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival on 22 March.