New Writing

Two UEA alumni have been nominated for this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction, formerly known as the Orange Prize and then the Bailey’s Prize. Diana Evans is longlisted for her third novel, Ordinary People, published by Chatto & Windus, and Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott for her debut Swan Song, published by Hutchinson. Diana (pictured) graduated from the MA in Creative Writing (Prose Fiction) in 2003. Her debut novel, 26a, was published in 2005 and won the inaugural Orange Award for New Writers and the British Book Awards deciBel Writer of the Year prize and was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award, the Guardian First Book Award and the Commonwealth Best First Book Award. Her second novel, The Wonder, was published in 2009. Kelleigh graduated from the MA in Creative Writing (Prose Fiction) in 2017, having previously earned a BFA in Drama from Carnegie Mellon University before studying screenwriting at the University of Southern California. As a work-in-progress, Swan Song was awarded the 2015 Bridport / Peggy Chapman-Andrews Award and was shortlisted for the Lucy Cavendish College Fiction Prize and the Myriad Editions First Drafts Competition. The shortlist for the Women’s Prize will be announced 29 April and the winner on 5 June.