Edge Hill short story prize

Well, I expected that when I got to the end of my big writing stint I'd get back to blogging more frequently, but it hasn't happened... I've had so many practical things to catch up on (including a week spent decorating!), I've been away twice, and other, more journalistic work has been piling in. One of my trips was to London and included the Edge Hill award ceremony on Thursday, at which Graham Mort won the prize for his collection Touch (Seren) and Salt author Tom Vowler won the Reader's Choice prize (chosen by sixth formers) for a story from his debut collection, The Method and Other Stories. The other shortlisted authors were Polly Samson for Perfect Lives (Virago), Helen Simpson with In-Flight Entertainment (Cape), and Michele Roberts with Mud: Stories of Sex and Love (Virago).

As Graham (left) was in Africa, Seren fiction editor Penny Thomas received his prize instead and read from the message he'd sent (below).

 

I've been to so few events in the past few months and am consequently so out of touch with taking photos at them that I  failed to get a photo of Tom receiving his prize, but this was also partly because he was so surprised to get it, it seemed, that he had no speech prepared and didn't hang around at the front! Here he is, though, in the audience beforehand (centre) and looking as though a prize was the last thing on earth he expected:

On the left of him is Adam Marek, author of the short-story collection Instruction Manual for Swallowing (Comma) and just behind on the right Robert Shearman, who won the Reader's Choice prize last year and was short-listed in 2008 with his collection Tiny Deaths (Comma).

I really can't believe, either, that I didn't get photos of the other shortlisted authors, who were all there. It's all just too exciting, you see, after being incarcerated at my desk for so long...

As for my own project: I've now had feedback from my early readers: mostly typos, but one reader thought I should excise a (small) section which she didn't think added to the whole, and I have decided she's right. Also, an inconsistency occurred to me out of the blue one day (and when I mentioned it to that reader she said that she'd also noticed it), so that's another thing to see to, and I'm hoping to get down to finalising the ms in the next few days. And funnily enough, when I went outside to the garden this morning, I noticed the jackdaws flying back in to their previously emptied nest. Brooding again, perhaps, just as I'm about to start brooding the novel once more...

Edge Hill Prize and other gatherings

To a sultry-hot London yesterday and Blackwell on Charing Cross Road for the Edge Hill short story prizegiving. Winner was Jeremy Dyson for his collection The Cranes that Build the Cranes. Robert Shearman, who was also shortlisted in 2008, won the Reader's Prize, awarded by a panel of students, for his wonderfully surreal and warm-hearted collection, Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical. Many congratulations! It was a lovely do, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, especially meeting in person for the first time Nuala Ni Chonchuir (above, right) whose wonderful collection Nude was shortlisted - and who will be visiting here next Wednesday with her amazing novel You. Also lovely to meet fellow-Salt author Weena Poon at last, and to meet up again with so many literary friends including prizewinner Robert Shearman, Sunday-Times short story competition shortlister Adam Marek, Salt poet Robert Sheppard (above, centre), my lovely publisher Jen Hamilton-Emery (above, left), and my long-time friend and colleague Ailsa Cox, the brains behind the Edge Hill Prize. It was a whole afternoon and evening of catch-ups: Beforehand I met Salt author Jay Merill for coffee, which was lovely, and I got her to sign my new copy of her latest Salt book God of the Pigeons, which I read on the train down - great voices, and haunting stories. After the prizegiving we went to the Phoenix arts club across the road, where the launch had been taking place of three new Salt poetry collections, The Method Men by David Briggs, Snow Calling by Agnieszka Studzinska and Mark Granier's Fade Street, so I bumped into a clutch of poets, including my good blogging friend Katy Evans-Bush.

I've been worn out today, perhaps partly because I ended up running more or less half the distance back to Euston in order to catch the last decent train back to Manchester (the one after it, at 10 o'clock, takes over 7 hrs - now maybe I'm turning into an old blimp, but really, what's the world coming to: you used to be able to catch one at 11 and still get back to Stockport by half one!). I had thought that I could walk the distance in half an hour - badly underestimated, I began to realize as I was half-way - and ended up sprinting and caught the train by the skin of my teeth: I belted down the platform while the guard stood flicking her flag thing VERY impatiently and glared like mad, and the moment I stepped onto the train it started moving. Phew.

Really, I may as well have stayed in London overnight for the energy I've got left today - none for writing. The main problem, though, was that there was drink, and I'm not used to it, as for the past few months I've been mostly abstaining - partly to be healthy and more recently for the sake of the novel-writing - but hey it was a real celebration! And I'm not exactly hung over, but I certainly don't feel full of energy or mentally alert.

Ah well. It was worth it. And from now on I should be able to settle down to uninterrupted writing... (Touch wood; or maybe I shouldn't speak too soon...)

Here's Ailsa with winner Jeremy Dyson behind her:

Claire Keegan wins Edge Hill Prize

Yesterday afternoon John and I drove over to Liverpool and the awards ceremony for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize in the Bluecoat Gallery, where Irish writer Claire Keegan was presented with the prize for her wonderfully evocative second collection, Walk the Blue Fields. Runner-up was Simon Robson (The Separate Heart), and the Readers' Choice Prize (chosen by reading groups in the area) went to Christopher Fowler for Old Devil Moon. Aslo shortlisted were Jane Gardam (The People on Privilege Hill), and Robert Shearman, whose Tiny Deaths was the one book on the list published by a small independent, Comma Press.

Accepting her prize, Claire Keegan echoed a sentiment I've expressed elsewhere and spoke of the mistake that people make in assuming that the short story is a quick-fix read suitable for a rushed age. Stories are anything but, she said: it's no wonder they're unpopular as they require a special kind of concentration and stillness.

I was told that around thirty books had been submitted (publishers were allowed to submit two books each), that the competition had been stiff and that a consideration in choosing a shortlist had been not simply the quality of individual stories but whether or not a book made a good collection - by which I think was meant a unified collection, a somewhat contentious issue I've discussed previously here. The three judges (who I think read only the shortlist) were novelist Hilary Mantel, BBC producer Duncan Minshull and Professor Rhiannon Evans of Edge Hill.

I had a great evening: the canapes - chosen apparently by Edge Hill lecturer and prize instigator (and my metropolitan co-editor) Ailsa Cox - were probably the best I've ever tasted (goat's cheese and aubergine - wow!) and I had a good chinwag with some really interesting people.

Here I am talking to shortlister Robert Shearman:


These were John's favourite canapes, beetroot and sushi, bit blurred I'm afraid - guess he was overexcited:

A big day for a little writer

What an amazing day I had on Friday. First I met my lovely publisher Jen from Salt. Well, of course I think Jen can do magic because she's publishing my book, but she also arrived from Cambridge miraculously fast through the flooding country and arrived for lunch at Croma bang on time. (It was a different story, though, according to her blog, when she went back later in the evening.) We had a great lunch and Jen had brought me a lovely present - a proof copy of Carys Davies's forthcoming collection of short stories, which is due out at the same time as mine. I met Carys over the internet through our both being published by Salt, and it turned out that we had each spent a part of our childhood in the same tiny corner of South Wales which features in both our books. Magic, or what?

Here's Jen and me in Croma:



Then Jen and I parted for the afternoon - she to meet Forward Prize nominated Salt poet Eleanor Rees, and I to do a spot of leafleting before the tech rehearsal for The Processing Room. I had dressed up for the evening in a frock and heels but then I found myself lugging chairs around and sticking down duct tape so I can't say I ended up looking very glamorous. I can't say either that the tech went without a hitch - for one thing, I'd been so busy with publicity and thus absent from the last couple of rehearsals that I had failed to remind everyone that I had arranged for Tom Wright, the 24:7 photographer to cover the show at the tech, and the costumes hadn't been brought! (But it'll all be all right on the night - honest!)

Then it was off out into the liquid day day again, leaving everyone else to pack up, and down rainswept Cross Street to the Royal Exchange where the award ceremony for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize had already begun. Jen was there, with Eleanor Rees whom I met for the first time. The prize, for a collection by a single author and judged in this its inaugural year by AL Kennedy, was instigated by Ailsa Cox with whom I founded and edited metropolitan short story magazine. Short-listed authors were Neil Gaiman, Jackie Kay, Colm Toibin and two authors we published in metropolitan, Nicholas Royle and Tamar Yellin. Winner was Colm Toibin for Mothers and Sons (Picador). In his heartening winning speech he said that short stories were a much more difficult form than novels and that the notion of them as minor and 'practice' for the 'real' form of novels was seriously mistaken.

After this I had a couple of hours to kill before going to be interviewed on BBC Radio Manchester, so I went up to Cornerhouse to let the effects of two glasses of wine wear off and gather my thoughts for the interview - and who should I meet but Mark who the evening before had interviewed me and Stephanie on Let's Go Global TV.

Then it was quarter to ten and time to turn up at the BBC. What a strange place the BBC is at night - so hushed, not a soul around as I made my way down the winding corridors to Radio Manchester. Through the glass you could see the BBC car park gleaming and black with rain, but the little waiting area was cosy with bright light and a soft sofa and the sound of the current broadcast coming softly through the speakers - like a little oasis in the streaming night. And that's exactly how Phil Woods' programme seems too, an oasis in the night, with his urbane voice and his calm relaxed style, and in no time at all I had forgotten I was on the radio, which of course is how it should be. I was 'Mrs Manchester' for the night, choosing my favourite records (while of course plugging my play), and we ended up with Fats Waller's 'Your Feet's Too Big' which John once bought me because I have such big feet for someone of my not too considerable height.

And then out of the BBC on my big feet and straight onto a 42 bus, and I was stepping through the door by midnight.

Not bad, eh, for a writer - ie one whose typical day is spent in jamas and moving only between the desk and the kettle?