Women writers rock the Wales Book of the Year 2009 shortlist
Deborah Kay Davies
Women often seem to be underrepresented at literary awards, but this year’s Wales Book of the Year presents a different viewpoint, with an all-female shortlist.
The premier award for Welsh Writing announced its shortlist at the Guardian Hay Festival, with short story and poetry collections vying for the Book of the Year plaudit, as well as the £10,000 prizes.
From a longlist for the English-language work that included some of Wales’ best known writers, Deborah Kay Davies has been shortlisted with her first collection of short stories, entitled Grace, Tamar and Laszlo the Beautiful. The stories are loosely based on her own life, capturing the volatile relationship between two sisters growing up in South Wales and exploring the dark truths about family and sibling relationships.
Alongside Deborah, poet Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch has been shortlisted with her second collection, Not in These Shoes. Her poems depict different characters and different worlds - from the flooding of Capel Celyn valley to Brighton West Pier and from the plight of the Romanov girls to an overworked waitress.
The final writer to be shortlisted is award-winning fiction writer Gee Williams, with her second book of short stories, Blood Etc. The collection is set in Flintshire, exploring this border country with a sense of lives lived in rural and small-town settings where half the population speaks mainly Welsh, and half mainly English.
The 2009 English-language judges are poet, critic and lecturer at the University of Wales, Tiffany Atkinson; poet, essayist and former editor of Planet, John Barnie and broadcaster and travel writer Mike Parker (Chair).
Mike Parker says: “If there’s one thing that these three short-listed works have in common, it is their precise, almost forensic, use of language to create whole worlds into which the reader is utterly seduced. They are all dazzling demonstrations of how to convey huge truths with cool, clear language and uncluttered ideas: nothing is superfluous. Picking a winner is going to be terrible, for they all deserve it.”
The English and Welsh-language winners will be announced on Monday June 15th at a gala dinner at St David’s Hotel, Cardiff where each will receive a cheque for £10,000. The runners-up will receive £1,000.
*Update June 16th 2009*
Deborah Kay Davies won the Wales Book of the Year award 2009 for Grace, Tamar and Laszlo the Beautiful.
CONGRATULATIONS!
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