New Writing

Two UEA alumni have been longlisted for the 2019 Rathbones Folio Prize, which is worth £30,000 to the winner. Diana Evans is nominated for Ordinary People (Chatto & Windus) and Mohammed Hanif for Red Birds (Bloomsbury). Diana 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. Ordinary People is also longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Mohammed (pictured) graduated from the Prose Fiction MA in 2005 and published his debut novel A Case of Exploding Mangoes in 2008. This was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the James Tait Black Prize, and was the winner of the Literature Prize at the 2009 Corine International Book Awards and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in the Europe and South Asia Best First Book category. His second novel Our Lady of Alice Bhatti was published in 2011 and was shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. The shortlist for the Rathbones Folio Prize will be announced on 4 April and the winner on 20 May.