New Writing

Two recent graduates of the UEA MA in Creative Writing (Prose Fiction) have recently secured film and TV deals for their debut novels. The BBC will adapt Elizabeth Is Missing by Emma Healey as a 90 minute drama for broadcast in 2019, while the rights to Imogen Hermes Gowar’s The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock have been secured by BAFTA and Golden Globe-winning producer Colin Callender’s company Playground. Emma graduated from UEA in 2011 and published Elizabeth Is Missing in 2014, winning the Costa First Novel Award, a Betty Trask Award, and Italy’s Premio Salerno Libro D’Europa prize. The novel was shortlisted for the Jarrold New Writing Award, the Independent Booksellers Week Awards, the Desmond Elliott Prize, The Times Breakthrough Award, and the Blackwell’s Book of the Year Award, and was longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her second novel, Whistle In The Dark, is published by Viking on 3 May. Imogen (pictured) gained a BA in Archaeology, Anthropology and Art History from UEA in 2012, and graduated from the MA in 2014. Her novel, which was published earlier this year, was shortlisted for the MsLexia First Novel Competition and the inaugural Deborah Rogers Foundation Writers’ Award, as well as being longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Desmond Elliott Prize.