New Writing

UEA alumna Imogen Hermes Gowar has been shortlisted for the 2018 Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, which is co-sponsored by the literary agency Peters Fraser & Dunlop in association with the University of Warwick. Imogen (pictured) is nominated for her debut novel The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock, which was also shortlisted for the 2018 Women’s Prize for Fiction, longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize, and chosen as the Literature nominee for the Breakthrough Award at this year’s South Bank Sky Arts Awards. Imogen graduated from UEA with a BA in Archaeology, Anthropology and Art History in 2012 and from the MA in Creative Writing (Prose Fiction) in 2014, when she was the winner of the Curtis Brown Award. An early draft of her novel, which she began while completing her MA, was a finalist in the MsLexia First Novel Competition in 2015 and was shortlisted for the inaugural Deborah Rogers Foundation Writers’ Award. The winner of this year’s Young Writer of the Year Award will be announced on 6 December. Three UEA graduates have previously won the award: Andrew Cowan in 1994, Naomi Alderman in 2007 and Adam Foulds in 2008. Adam Foulds was also shortlisted in 2009 along with fellow UEA alumnus Edward Hogan. Sara Taylor was shortlisted in 2015 and again in 2017, when Julianne Pachico was also shortlisted.