Wales and Scottish Books of the Year. Orwell Prize Winners

Whoops. Tragic has been a bit off his blogging game the last week or two and a few book awards have slipped through to the keeper ( a cricketing term for those unfamiliar). He has been kept busy updating Literary Festivals UK. Those tricky festivals come, they go and some vanish like Brigadoon. A song coming on.......

Scottish and Welsh awards are in focus. Love the diversity. Is there a distinct Scottish or Welsh voice in literature? Tragic is woefully ignorant of the Welsh genre, but James Kelman, who is getting to be a blog regular, certainly gives voice to an authentic Scottish experience judging by peer response. Is there a Cornish or Isle Of Man Book Award or others for those regions who would like more autonomy? How necessary is it to have distinct regional narrative in literature to keep a culture alive?

Links below to Blackwell Books. Full details of 70 other English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh awards at at Literary Awards UK.

£10,000 Prize Wales Book of the Year

Deborah Kay Davies has won the Wales Book of the Year 2009 for her debut collection of short stories Grace, Tamar and Laszlo the Beautiful published by Parthian.

The announcement was made on Monday 15 June, at an award ceremony at The St David’s Hotel and Spa, introduced by BBC Political Editor, Betsan Powys and poet Linton Kwesi Johnson.

Deborah Kay Davies received the £10,000 prize from judge Mike Parker (no relation as far as we know to the Award Tragic alter ego, Kevin Parker)

Set in the eastern valleys of South Wales from 1970 to the present, Grace, Tamar and Laszlo the Beautiful tells the story of two sisters, Grace and Tamar, their volatile childhood, disruptive coming of age and dubious maturity. By turns moving, hilarious and terrifying and often all three at once, it is an unusual collection in that each story is complete in its own right, but also forms part of a continuous and powerful sequence. Part fantasy, part social history, these are dark, universal tales about how utterly strange it is to learn to be human.

The two runners-up were each awarded £1,000: Gee Williams for Blood etc. (Parthian) and Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch for Not in these Shoes (Picador).

The winner of the Welsh-language award, who also received a £10,000 prize, was William Owen Roberts for his book Petrograd (Cyhoeddiadau Bardda)

£25,000 Scottish Book of the Year -

Kieron Smith, Boy , by James Kelman has won. Was it the only book of worth with a Scottish pedigree in the last year? It has won Scottish Grand Slam of Book Awards as it can now add the Scottish Arts Council Prize to the cabinet with the The Aye Write Scottish Fiction and the Saltire Scottish.

Despite being a formidable writer and highly praised, Mr. Kelman has done it tough over the years as making a dollar from the quill, especially for quality prose, is ever-more challenging. Tragic has been a Kelman reader for years, and, whilst not particularly comfortable reads, Mr. K books always captivate and lead to the need for a comforting malt.

In his gracious acceptance of the Scottish Arts Book of the Year , Mr Kelman said, in as many words, that the value of literary prizes, both for prestige and the $$$'s attached, should not be underestimated to enable authors to pursue their craft. A bunch of Daffodils therefore to Scottish Mortgage for taking up the sponsorship of this important award. Tragic does feel that the title, as he has seen it reported, The Scottish Arts Council Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book Awards, does need a little work though!

Orwell Prize for Political Writing Winner-

The Orwell Prize is the pre-eminent British prize for political writing. There are three annual awards: a Book Prize and a Journalism Prize and a Political Blog Prize. They are awarded to the book, and for the journalism, which is judged to have best achieved George Orwell’s aim to ‘make political writing into an art’. Homage to Catalonia, Down and Out in Paris and London, The Road to Wigan Pier, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Animal Farm and Orwell’s incomparable essays still resonate around the world as peerless examples of courageous independence of mind, steely analysis and beautiful writing..

Winner: , Andrew Brown for Fishing in Utopia: Sweden and the Future That Disappeared. Patrick Cockburn – was awarded the Journalism Prize for articles from the London Review of Books and the London Independent.

Description: From the 1960s to the 1980s, Sweden was an affluent, egalitarian country envied around the world. Refugees were welcomed, even misfit young Englishmen could find a place there. Andrew Brown spent part of his childhood in Sweden during the 1960s. In the 1970s he married a Swedish woman and worked in a timber mill raising their small son. Fishing became his passion and his escape. In the mid-1980s his marriage and the country fell apart. The Prime Minister was assassinated. The welfare system crumbled along with the industries that had supported it. Twenty years later Andrew Brown travelled the length of Sweden in search of the country he had loved, and then hated, and now found he loved again.

2009 Orwell Journalism & Blog Prizes

Patrick Cockburn – awarded the Journalism Prize for articles from the London Review of Books and the London Independent.

Jack Night – awarded the Special Prize for Blogs for his blog, NightJack – An English Detective. (Jack Night, a pseudonym, is a serving police officer)

Journalism Prize
Bennett, Catherine: The Observer
Cockburn, Patrick: The Independent, London Review of Books- Winner
Hitchens, Peter: The Mail on Sunday
Macintyre, Donald: The Independent
Oborne, Peter: Daily Mail, Channel 4 Dispatches, Prospect
Porter, Henry: The Observer

Blog Prize
Alix Mortimer: The People's Republic of Mortimer -
Andrew Sparrow: Guardian Politics Blog
Chekov: Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness
Iain Dale: Iain Dale's Diary
Jack Night: Night Jack - Winner
Paul Mason: BBC Newsnight - Idle Scrawl

Oh Canada! My Heart is Breaking!

To those lovely Canadian folk who have emailed me regarding the lack of updates. Sorry Canada - your lands and plethora of awards are just too wide and mighty to keep-up with. Tragic fears that he might have to caste you adrift (temporarily he hopes) outside of your majors. Canlit Awards, Tragic's Canadian book list site, has sunk into cyber-quicksands of disrepair - even missed the Trilliums. Ouch.