Colm Tóibín, the Irish author, had been widely tipped to walk away with the £30,000 prize for his novel Brooklyn, the tale of a young Irish immigrant torn between New York and her homeland.
It was the 6/4 favourite according to William Hill. A Scattering was a distant second at 5/2.
But the 54-year-old Irishman was denied a major literary prize again, having been shortlisted but overlooked for the Man Booker prize twice before.
Josephine Hart, the author of Damage, who chaired the judging panel, described A Scattering as “austere and beautiful and moving”.
She said: “We regard it as a master work by a man who for sad reasons has met artistically his moment.”
He had managed to take his personal tragedy and make it universal, she explained.
“We would immediately give it to friends, whether they were suffering [bereavement] or not.”
Reid’s wife Lucinda Gane, an actress who starred in Grange Hill in the 1980s, died in October 2005 of cancer.
Reid, 60, professor of creative writing at Hull University, who edited the book The Letters of Ted Hughes, started writing his poems about her as the illness took hold.
He wrote others after she had died, reflecting on his loss and her absence. They had been married almost 30 years.
It is the first time that a poet has won the award since 1999, when Seamus Heaney won it (as the Whitbread, under the guise of its previous sponsor) for Beowulf.
Since the prize began in 1985 it has been won by poets of six occasions – twice by Heaney, who also won it for Spirit Level in 1996; twice by Ted Hughes (Birthday Letters in 1998 and Tales from Ovid in 1997); once by Douglas Dunn (Elegies in 1985) and now by Reid.
A Scattering was named as the Costa Poetry Book of the Year earlier this month. The overall winner is chosen from the five categories in the awards: poetry, novel, first novel, biography, and children’s novel.
Brooklyn won best novel; Beauty by Rapheal Selbourne won the first novel award; The Strangest Man by Graham Farmelo won the biography award and The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness won the children’s book award.
]]>This year’s awards ceremony will be held at the Arnolfini arts centre, located on Bristol’s vibrant harbourside
Prizes: 1st £500 plus £150 Waterstone’s gift card; 2nd £350 plus £100 Waterstone’s gift card; 3rd £200 plus £100 Waterstone’s gift card. The other 17 writers whose stories are published in the anthology will each receive a cheque for £50. There is a £7 entry fee for each story submitted. Max. word count is 3,000, no minimum.
Stories can be submitted online or by post.
Full Details HERE
]]>Closing date: 15th February 2010
s long as your entry is connected to Wales in some way then the genre is your choice. You can submit poetry (up to 40 lines), short stories (up to 1000 words), micro-fiction (up to 300 words) and illustrations.
The winning and outstanding entries will be published in the forthcoming Leaf Writing magazine, to be launched in Spring 2010. These, and further commended entries, will also be published in an anthology.
More Details HERE
All you have to do is write a short story (for adults) of no more than 2,000 words, on the theme of ‘Unity or Union’ and email it to competition@acblack.com with ‘WAYB10 competition’ as the subject line.
Arvon provides residential creative writing courses at four beautiful, historic houses around the UK. Their courses – tutored by professional, published writers – are world famous for the inspiration they provide to writers at every stage of their writing lives.
*Courses are subject to availability at the time of booking.
The closing date is 14 February 2010.
You’ll Find Rules And Full Details HERE
]]>The Kerry Group Irish fiction Award.
The Bryan Mac Mahon Short Story Award.
Duais Foras Na gaeilge.
Eamon Keane Full Length Play.
Writer’s Week Originals Competition.
Writing in Prisons.
The Single Poem Competition.
The Collection of Poetry Competition.
Irish post/Stena Line New writing competition.
Fiction Slam competition.
Kerry County Council creative writing competition for youth.
‘Tell your Story’
Rules and details HERE
]]>Prizes for authors:
First Prize: $1000
Second Prize: $500
Third Prize: $300
The 10 best-rated stories will be given to an independent jury consisting of the Georgia Writers Association & BookRix.
Perhaps you want to inform your members and subscribers about the competition so they can win great prizes.
More Information HERE
]]>The prize is $1,000 and the winner gets literary agency representation including assistance preparing the novel for submission to publishers.
The 2008 winner, 13 to Life, was written in five weeks on the website and is coming out as the first of a three book series in June 2010 from St. Martin?s Press.
Contest details are at http://www.textnovel.com/contestrules.php. There is no entry fee.
]]>One in six primary school pupils think Fagin – famously brought to cinematic life by Ron Moody in the 1968 musical Oliver! – was a footballer who played for Manchester United.
Moby Dick? Well, he was a pop star or explorer, according to eighty per cent of eight to ten-year-olds.
And one in ten think Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea is Simon Cowell’s autobiography.
The results of a new survey commissioned by Asda suggest that the books which so many of our parents treasured are being almost completely ignored by today’s youngsters.
The adventures of Jim Hawkins and Long John Silver – which first came to life in the imagination of a young Robert Louis Stevenson in his Heriot Row home – and Edinburgh-born Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows it would seem are destined to be largely forgotten. Their place in the literary pantheon is being taken by another city writer, JK Rowling, whose ubiquitous Harry Potter books have been read by one in three youngsters.
The research also suggests, slightly depressingly, that one in two children know David Beckham’s memoirs are called My Side.
Dewi Williams, spokesperson for Asda, says: “The children’s bestseller list is dominated by modern literature. Books like Oliver Twist and The Wind in the Willows, which have been must-reads for generations, are getting dangerously close to extinction.”
Vanessa Robertson, who owns The Children’s Bookshop and The Edinburgh Bookshop, both in Bruntsfield, recognises the trend towards more modern writers, although sales of classic books have remained “fairly steady”.
“I don’t think the classics are dying out but some are fading a little, like the lesser known ones – for example, The Railway Children by E Nesbit sells well but the more obscure The Enchanted Castle doesn’t sell as well,” she says.
“Classic novels are such a part of our cultural heritage it would be a shame to see them die out.”
Sometimes, though, all that is needed to give them a new lease of life is a bit of fresh window dressing.
“Children are still reading classic novels, especially the ones that have a slightly fresher look. A new edition of Pippi Longstocking came out last Christmas, it’s a traditional book but it had new illustrations and kids were loving it – it gave it a new lease of life”, she says.
“HarperCollins did a new edition of Wuthering Heights. They put a Twilight-esque cover on it and it sells really well. It is getting teenagers reading Wuthering Heights which has got to be a good thing!”
Edinburgh’s Unesco City of Literature Trust has experimented with great success in this area. It has offered classic books including Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World in a variety of formats, such as comic book-style, in order to make them more appealing to youngsters.
Ali Bowden, director of the trust, says: “We have done animated versions and audio versions of books to try to put them in as many formats as possible, and that’s been successful.
“Sometimes it can be a little daunting to be given a 600-page classic and told it is a classic if you are a young kid, so maybe it’s about how you present books and talk about them.”
To get hung up on whether children are reading “the classics”, though, is to miss the point, says Ms Bowden.
“I think the most important thing is that kids read, rather than being overly prescriptive on what they read,” she explains.
“I think the classic novels are still being taught in schools and I suspect most kids are being given contemporary books rather than classics at home. A lot of kids are reading a whole range of books, including classics.
“Nurturing a passion for reading is really important, rather than giving kids a really strict book list.”
Father-of-two and avid reader Gavin Corbett is just happy to see his sons Ben, seven, and Charlie, five, enjoying books, regardless of when they were written.
“There are some really excellent new writers and I think the quality of writing for children is as high as it’s ever been,” he says.
“If kids were to only read books from yesteryear, it would suggest a real crisis in the quality of modern writing.”
With so many children still enjoying a good yarn, perhaps all Robert Louis Stevenson and his ilk need is a better marketing team.
Rod Grant, headmaster of Clifton Hall School in Newbridge, who is keen to promote reading – “whether that’s Harry Potter or Treasure Island” – says that dusty and dull old book covers can be a real turn-off to youngsters.
“There are so many books available for kids now and they are marketed well with such colourful front covers that a classic book is hard pushed to go up against that.”
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