The winner for the £30,000 University of Wales Dylan Thomas Prize for Young Writers is due on December 1st. The prize recognises writing by an author under the age of 30.
Tragic's tip is Watering Can by the extremely talented poet Caroline Bird. She was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas in 2008 for Trouble Came to the Turnip
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. Simply sublime work for one so young.
If she stays on track she will become Britain's youngest ever Poet Laureate. A very early call. But you heard it here first!
Regrettably,her state of the art flash web site takes so long to load even those of us with state of the art technology lose interest. Caroline's poems are other worldly as we might expect from a Steiner educated woman -so persevere.
The last Dylan Thomas was won by Australian Nam Le's The Boat: Stories (Vintage)which went on to become a multi-award winner.
The 2010 shortlist of authors is:
- 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
About Caroline Bird with thanks to Wiki
Caroline Bird has had two collections of poetry published by Carcanet. Her first collection, Looking Through Letterboxes (published in 2002 when she was 15), is a collection of poems built on the traditions of fairy tale, fantasy and romance. Her second collection, Trouble Came to the Turnip, was published in September 2006 to critical acclaim.
Bird's poems have been published in several anthologies, including Carcanet's New Poetries III and Oxford Poets 2008, and are published regularly in PN Review, Poetry Review and The North magazine. Her poems and a commissioned short story, "Sucking Eggs", have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4. A member of the Royal Court Young Writers Programme, Bird has also written six plays: Nothing to Say, The Pie, Lumberjills, A Hymn With Drums, Student Play and A Special Boy (recently performed at the Burton Taylor Theatre in Oxford.)
Unfortunately your forecast was wrong - not Caroline Bird but another poet Elyse Fenton was the winner for her book about the Iraq War where her husband was serving as a medic.
ReplyDeleteElyse has a couple of tenuous connections with Wales and Dylan Thomas - she lives in Philadelphia - home to many Welsh steel and coal immigrants in the 19th century. During the week leading up to the award ceremony she stayed at the birthplace and home of Dylan Thomas at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive.
She becomes the first poet to win the £30,000 award which is sponsored by the University of Wales.
The £5,000 Sony eReader award for the best work by an unpublished author was won by Stefan Mohamed from Knighton in Powys. Both he and runnner up Ben Wood are expected to be offered book deals.