Two UEA Creative Writing alumnae have been longlisted for the 2020 Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year award: Louise Doughty for Platform Seven (Faber) and Harriet Tyce for Blood Orange. Louise graduated from the MA in Creative Writing at UEA in 1987 and published her first novel, Crazy Paving, in 1995. Her seventh novel, Apple Tree Yard, was published in 2013 and chosen for the Richard & Judy Book Club and shortlisted for both the Specsavers National Book Awards and the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger. It was adapted for television and broadcast on BBC1 in 2017. Harriet was born and grew up in Edinburgh and graduated from the University of Oxford in 1994 with a degree in English Literature. Subsequently she gained legal qualifications and worked as a criminal barrister for ten years. She joined the inaugural cohort of UEA’s MA in Creative Writing (Crime Fiction) in 2015, and wrote Blood Orange during the course, graduating in 2017. Blood Orange was published by Wildfire in 2019 and shortlisted for the Amazon Publishing Readers’ Awards in two categories: Best Debut and Best Audiobook. The shortlist for the Old Peculier award will be announced on 8 June and the winner revealed at a virtual awards ceremony on 31 July.
Harriet Tyce and Louise Doughty longlisted for Theakston Old Peculier award
