Charles Ellingworth Longlisted for the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award
23rd March 2011
From Booktrade.info:
The Authors' Club is delighted to announce the shortlist for its Best First Novel Award of 2011. The shortlisted books are:
Farundell by L.R. Fredericks (John Murray)
Grace Williams Says It Loud by Emma Henderson (Sceptre)
London Triptych by Jonathan Kemp (Myriad Editions)
The Still Point by Amy Sackville (Portobello)
Dry Season by Dan Smith (Orion)
Witness the Night by Kishwar Desai (Beautiful Books)
The Authors' Club Best First Novel Award is presented to the most promising debut novel issued by a British publisher in the previous year. The shortlist is selected by a panel of Club members. The chair of judges, literary critic Suzi Feay, commented:
"From a very strong longlist of 12 books it was difficult to prune, but after a tense discussion six titles clearly came to the fore. We have a wonderfully diverse shortlist. Reading all six will take you on a epic voyage to the far north; to a mystical English mansion; a dangerous dead-end town in Brazil; into the mind of a most original female narrator; through three eras of gay London; and headlong into an gripping Indian mystery. All these authors have the potential to go on to brilliant careers."
Also longlisted were:
The Go-Away Bird by Warren FitzGerald (HarperCollins)
Vision of Loveliness by Louise Levene (Bloomsbury)
Catch by Simon Robson (Vintage)
The Breaking of Eggs by Jim Powell (Phoenix)
Silent Night by Charles Ellingworth (Quartet)
Where the Serpent Lives by Ruth Padel (Little, Brown)
The winner will be announced and the £2500 prize presented at a reception at Waterstone's Piccadilly, London W1, on 14 April 2011. This year's guest adjudicator is the bestselling novelist Joanne Harris, who will select the winner from the shortlist.
The Authors' Club Best First Novel Award
From its inception in 1954, the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award has been awarded to writers who have gone on to enjoy long and distinguished careers, including Brian Moore for The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, Alan Sillitoe for Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and Paul Bailey for At the Jerusalem. Recent winners include Anthony Quinn for The Rescue Man, Laura Beatty for Pollard (2009), Segun Afolabi for Goodbye Lucille (2008) and Nicola Monaghan for The Killing Jar (2007).
