New Writing

Two UEA writers have been shortlisted for this year’s Costa Book Awards. The Gustav Sonata by Rose Tremain (Chatto & Windus) is nominated in the Novel category, while Say Something Back by Denise Riley (Picador) is nominated in the Poetry category. Rose (pictured) graduated from UEA with a BA in English in 1967 and later returned to the university to teach on the Creative Writing MA and, more recently, to become the University’s first female Chancellor. Among her many other acclaimed novels are Music and Silence (1999), which won the Whitbread Novel Award, and The Road Home, which won the 2008 Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction. She was made a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours of 2007. Denise is currently a Professor of Poetry and the History of Ideas at UEA, and was formerly the convenor of the MA in Creative Writing (Poetry). Say Something Back was shortlisted for the 2016 Forward Prize for Best Collection and is also on the shortlist for the TS Eliot Prize, the winner of which will be announced in January. The winners of each of the five Costa categories will be awarded £5,000 when they are announced on 3rd January. The five category winners will then be considered for the Costa Book of the Year Award, which is worth £30,000 and will be announced on 31st January.