Women dominate Thomas Award nominations
Five of the six writers shortlisted for this year’s incarnation of the Dylan Thomas Award, which is a £30,000 prize given to the best published writer in English who is under 30.
The Beeb summed up the candidates quiet nicely:
Caroline Bird: UK poet and playwright, 23, the first writer to be nominated twice for the prize – for her third collection Watering Can
Nadifa Mohamed: Novelist, 28, who said Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood was the inspiration for her work Black Mamba Boy which describes a journey from her Somalia homeland to Port Talbot
Eleanor Catton: Novelist 24, who grew up in New Zealand explores the controversial topic of an affair between a high school girl and her teacher in The Rehearsal
Karan Mahajan: Indian-born, 26 and the only man on the shortlist, with his debut novel Family Planning
Elyse Fenton: US poet, 29, with her acclaimed collection Clamor, a book of war poety in which a woman reflects on her lover fighting in Afghanistan
Emilie Mackie: Born in Winchester, aged 27, she based her novel And This is True in the Scottish Highlands where she grew up
The winner will be announced on 1 December.
I am trying to remember the name and author of a novel which was listed for one of the past years of the Dylan Thomas prize. It was believed to have been based on the true story of a young man who witnessed the murder of his family from up in the attic of their African farmhouse. He has to return to boarding school but plans his own sort of revenge. The ” fictitious African country” sounded very like Zimbabwe.
It is driving me crazy!