Press Release
Writing the future for Scottish novelists04/03/2009
The shortlist for the new Sceptre Prize for emerging writers has been announced.
Three students from the University of Glasgow’s Edwin Morgan Centre for Creative Writing have been shortlisted from a dozen longlisted writers for the £1500 prize: Susan Kemp, Mary Paulson-Ellis and Fiona Rintoul.
In its second year, the annual Sceptre Prize is jointly run by the University of Glasgow and Sceptre (an imprint of Hodder & Stoughton) to encourage new Scottish novelists. All students from the University of Glasgow’s acclaimed Edwin Morgan Centre for Creative Writing who achieve Distinctions in their final projects are eligible. They must submit between 5,000 and 10,000 words of a novel or a novel in progress.
The three shortlisted works take very different themes as their focus: in Around, Around the Ragged Road, Susan Kemp amusingly dissects a mild-mannered man’s struggle to keep his job in a recession-hit Edinburgh estate agents. Mary Paulson-Ellis’s The Language of Flowers is a powerful study of grief, loss and the fraught relationships between mothers and daughters. And Fiona Rintoul’s Leipzig recreates the terrifying atmosphere of life under the Stasi’s gaze in 1980s East Germany.
Professor Michael Schmidt, Convener of the Creative Writing Programme at the University, said:
"The quality of work produced by our full- and part-time students who completed the programme in 2008 was really gratifying; it must have been a difficult field for the Sceptre judges to choose from! What's more, it was a collegiate group of writers, and they contributed in all sorts of way to the literary community at large. Congratulations to the winners, and also to the group."
Zoe Strachan, Creative Writing Course Tutor said:
"I'm delighted with this shortlist. Fiona, Mary and Sue are writers with distinctive new voices. Their novels are hugely different in style and content, but what they have in common is that each one is an intelligent and gripping read. Reading their work has been an absolute pleasure for me, and I don't envy the judges having to choose just one winner from such an impressive shortlist!”
Bob McDevitt, Publisher at Hodder in Scotland, said:
“New writing is the very life blood of our industry and courses such as the M Litt at Glasgow are providing a steady stream of fresh and exciting new voices. Our shortlisted writers this year all display the kind of talent and imagination that should see their work published in the future.”
Carole Welch, Publishing Director of Sceptre, said
“We have been impressed by the high standard shown by many of the entrants to the Sceptre Prize this year, which made it hard to whittle the shortlist down to three. Having had three men on the shortlist in 2008, it was interesting to find ourselves with an all-female shortlist this year. All are worthy contenders, and we look forward to announcing which one leads the field at Aye Write.”
The winner will be announced on Saturday 14 March and the prize will be presented as part of the Aye Write! literary festival in Glasgow. The University of Glasgow last year announced its commitment to supporting creative writing in Scotland through sponsorship of the Aye Write! festival for three years.