‘Time Past and Present’ is the eighth novel by UEA alumna Deirdre Madden and has recently been published by Faber & Faber.  Deirdre was born in Toomebridge in County Antrim, Northern Ireland and studied at Trinity College, Dublin, before joining the UEA Creative Writing MA in 1984.  Her first novella, ‘Hidden Symptoms’ was written during the course and published in 1986.  It won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature.  Her first novel, ‘The Birds of the Innocent Wood’, was published in 1988 and won the Somerset Maugham Award.  Her 1997 novel, ‘One By One In The Darkness’, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize in 1997.  She has also written three books for children. Her most recent novel, ‘Molly Fox’s Birthday’, was published by Faber in 2008 and shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction.

‘Apple Tree Yard’ is the seventh novel by UEA alumna Louise Doughty and is published by Faber & Faber this week.  Louise graduated from the MA in Creative Writing at UEA in 1987 and published her first novel, ‘Crazy Paving', in 1995. Her sixth novel, ‘Whatever You Love', was published in 2011 and shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award.  It was also longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. She has won awards for her radio drama and short stories, and has published a creative writing guidebook, ‘A Novel in a Year’, based on her newspaper column in The Telegraph. Rights to ‘Apple Tree Yard’ have also been sold in nine territories worldwide. 

UEA writer Ben Lyle has been shortlisted for the Hookline Novel Competition for his first novel, ‘The Generation of Happiness’.  The competition is open only to students and graduates of MA writing courses and the winner, chosen by reading groups, will see their novel published by Hookline.  The competition was won in 2011 by UEA alumna Gayle O’Brien for her novel, ‘Underground’.  Ben (pictured) studied Philosophy at the University of Warwick and interrupted a career in the film industry, where he worked for such companies such as the UK Film Council, Fine Line Features and Working Title, in order to join the Creative Writing MA in 2009. He graduated with a distinction in 2010 and is now undertaking his PhD at UEA.  He is co-head of development at Gorgeous Films.

UEA Reader in Poetry, George Szirtes, has been elected to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences as an Associate Fellow.  The Academy comprises 48 members, with ten international associate members.  Last month George (pictured) was the recipient of the Best Translated Book Award (BTBA) for his translation from the Hungarian of László Krasznahorkai's novel 'Satantango'.   Also in May he won the won the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE) Poetry Award for his book of poems for children, ‘In The Land of Giants’.  His most recent collection of poetry, ‘Bad Machine’, was published by Bloodaxe in January and subsequently nominated as Poetry Book Society Choice, guaranteeing its place on this year’s TS Eliot Prize shortlist. 

UEA alumna Eliza Robertson is the joint winner of the overall 2013 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for her story ‘We Walked On Water’.  She will share the award of £5,000 with Sharon Miller from Trinidad and Tobago, whose story is titled ‘The Whale House’.  Eliza (pictured) was born in Vancouver, Canada, and studied creative writing and political science at the University of Victoria before joining UEA, where she was the recipient of the Man Booker Scholarship.  She graduated with distinction from the MA in Creative Writing (Prose Fiction) in 2012, when she was the co-winner of the Curtis Brown award.  Earlier this year she was shortlisted for Canada’s CBC Short Story Prize and was last year shortlisted for the Willesden Herald International Short Story Prize.  She has twice been longlisted for the Journey Prize.  Eliza will be rejoining UEA in September to undertake a fully-funded PhD in Creative & Critical Writing.

‘The Execution of Noa P. Singleton’ is the debut novel by UEA alumna Elizabeth L. Silver, and is published this month by Random House/Crown in the USA and Headline Review in the UK, among several other publishers around the world.  Elizabeth (pictured) holds a BA in English from the University of Pennsylvania and graduated from the MA in Creative Writing at UEA in 2004.  Since graduation she has been the recipient of several grants, including a residency at the Byrdcliffe Artist Colony in Woodstock, New York, and the British Centre for Literary Translation (BCLT) Workshop in Tarazona, Spain. She has also worked as a Briefing and Research Attorney for the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in Austin, and is licensed to practice law in the state of California.

Elizabeth’s website can be found here: www.ElizabethLSilver.com

Recent UEA graduate Eliza Robertson has won the 2013 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for the Canada & Europe region.  Her story ‘We Walked On Water’ is now in contention for the overall Commonwealth Short Story Prize, along with the winners of the Africa, Asia, Caribbean and Pacific regions. The prize is awarded for the best piece of original unpublished short fiction and the overall winner receives £5,000 while the regional winners each receive £1,000.  Eliza (pictured) was born in Vancouver, Canada, and studied creative writing and political science at the University of Victoria, before joining UEA, where she was the recipient of the Man Booker Scholarship.  She graduated from the MA in Creative Writing (Prose Fiction) in 2012, and was awarded the Curtis Brown Prize for best dissertation. In Canada she has won three national fiction contests and has been twice longlisted for the Journey Prize. Most recently, she was a finalist for the 2013 CBC Short Story Prize. 

Debut novels by two UEA writers have been included in the shortlist of five titles for the Tibor Jones Pageturner Prize for currently unrepresented novelists.  Sally Campbell graduated from the MA in Creative Writing (Prose Fiction) in 2010 and is nominated for her novel ‘Burnt Island’.  Krishan Coupland is a current student on the Creative Writing MA and is nominated for his young adult novel ‘You Must Be Charlie’s Brother’.  Earlier this year Krishan (pictured) was second in the Poetry Book Society Student Poetry Competition, and in 2011 he was the winner of the Manchester Fiction Prize.  Launched in 2011, the Tibor Jones Pageturner Prize is worth £1,000 to the winner, who will be announced next month. The judges include Sophie Lambert, a literary agent at Conville & Walsh, and the novelist Evie Wyld.  

‘Marathon’, a new short story by UEA alumna Claire Powell, is to be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 this coming Sunday, 19th May, at 19.45.  Claire (pictured) graduated from the MA in Creative Writing (Prose Fiction) in 2012 and was awarded both the Malcolm Bradbury Memorial Bursary and the Malcolm Bradbury Continuation Grant for best performance on the MA.  Her stories have previously been published in Untitled Books and The Manchester Review.  ‘Marathon’ is being broadcast as part of the latest season of The Time Being, a showcase for new voices on the radio, which previously featured UEA gradaute Joe Dunthorne.

‘Ghosties’, a short story by current UEA Creative Writing student Meadhbh Ní Eadhra, has won this year’s The Moth Short Story Prize, judged by novelist and poet Martina Evans.  The prize is worth €1,000.  Meadhbh (pictured) is from Galway and is the author of two award-winning Irish language books for young people, ‘Rua’ and ‘Fáinne Fí Fífí’. She is currently enrolled on the MA in Creative Writing (Prose Fiction) at UEA.  Her story will be published in the summer issue of The Moth, whose website can be found here.

‘Goldfish’ is the new collection of poetry by UEA alumna Jennifer Wong and has recently been published by Chameleon Press.  Jennifer (pictured) was born in Hong Kong and has taught creative writing at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.  In 2012 she was writer-in-residence at Lingnan University and represented Hong Kong at the Poetry Parnassus Festival at London’s Southbank Centre.  She graduated from the MA in Creative Writing (Poetry) at UEA in 2009, having published her first collection ‘Summer Cicadas’, also with Chameleon, in 2006.  Her poems have been published widely in journals, and selected for anthologies including ‘World Record’ edited by Neil Astley and Anna Selby (Bloodaxe 2012), ‘Asian Writing in English’ edited by Agnes Lam (HKU), and ‘Lung Jazz: Young British Poets for Oxfam’ edited by Todd Swift and Kim Lockwood (Cinnamon Press 2012).

UEA Reader in Poetry, George Szirtes, has won this year’s Best Translated Book Award for his translation from the Hungarian of László Krasznahorkai's novel 'Satantango', which is published by Atlantic in the UK and New Directions in the USA.  The award is worth $5,000 and was announced at the PEN World Voices Festival in New York on Friday.  Last month George (pictured) also won the CLPE Poetry Award for his book of poems for children ‘In The Land of Giants’.  His first collection of poetry ‘The Slant Door’ Faber Memorial Prize in 1979, while his 2005 collection ‘Reel’ won the 2005 T.S. Eliot Prize.  'Song' was the winner of the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Single Poem) in 2009.  His previous awards for translation include The European Poetry Translation Prize, the Dery Prize, the Pro Cultura Hungaria medal and the Gold Star of the Hungarian Republic.

‘Daylight Saving’ by UEA alumnus Edward Hogan has been shortlisted for the 2013 Branford Boase Award for the best debut children's novel. The award is worth £1,000 and this year’s chair of judges is the Guardian's children's books editor Julia Eccleshare.  The winner will be announced on 11th July at a ceremony in London.  Edward (pictured) graduated from the MA in Creative Writing (Prose Fiction) in 2004.  His first novel, ‘Blackmoor’ (2008), was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award and the Dylan Thomas Prize and won the Desmond Elliot Prize.  ‘The Hunger Trace’ (2011) was shortlisted for both the Encore Award and the Portico Prize.  ‘Daylight Saving’ is currently also shortlisted for the 14-16 category of the Leeds Book Awards.

'The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure' is the first book by UEA Creative Writing graduate, CD (Chris) Rose, and is to be published by Melville House in both the UK and the USA next year.  Chris (pictured) graduated from the UEA Creative Writing MA (Prose Fiction) in 2007 and was shortlisted earlier this year for the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award for ‘Arkady Who Couldn't See And Artem Who Couldn't Hear’.  He has published numerous other short stories since graduation, most recently ‘A Publisher Surveys the Changing Literary Scene’ in the collection ‘Unthology 3’, and is currently working on a PhD in the short story at Edge Hill University.  'The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure' contains fifty-two short biographies of writers who leave their manuscripts on trains, set them on fire, or are never recognized for their genius, based on a blog of the same name.

 UEA Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, Jean McNeil, has been nominated for the 2013 Canadian National Magazine Awards for ‘Ice Diaries: a Climate Change Memoir’.  Jean (pictured) is the author of ten books of fiction, travel, literature and poetry, most recently the novel ‘The Ice Lovers’, which is set in the Antarctic.  Her work has been shortlisted for several major international awards, including the Governor-General’s Prize (Canada), and in 2005 she was awarded a Fellowship to join the British Antarctic Survey as a writer-in-residence.  She is the co-convenor of UEA’s Creative Writing MA (Prose Fiction).  Her shortlisted essay was previously awarded the 2012 Prism International Prize for Creative Non-Fiction and was nominated for a 2012 Pushcart Prize (USA and Canada).  Another essay ‘The Skeleton Coast’ was a finalist for the Prism International Creative Non-Fiction Award in 2013.

‘A Place In The Country’ is a newly translated collection of essays by the late W.G. Sebald and is published today by Hamish Hamilton.  Sebald (pictured) joined UEA in 1970 as a lecturer in German Literature and became Professor of European Literature in 1987.  He was a founding Director of the British Centre for Literary Translation (BCLT) in 1989 and taught on the MA in Creative Writing from the mid-1990s until his death in a car crash in 2001, aged 57.  Until he emerged as an internationally significant novelist with the publication of ‘The Emigrants’ in 1996, he was known principally as a scholar of German and particularly Austrian literature. His other highly acclaimed and influential novels are ‘Rings of Saturn’ (1999), ‘Vertigo’ (2000) and ‘Austerlitz’ (2001).  ‘A Place In The Country’ is translated by his former colleague and UEA Senior Lecturer in Literature, Jo Catling.

UEA Reader in Poetry, George Szirtes, has won this year’s CLPE Poetry Award for ‘In The Land of Giants’, his first book of poems for children since ‘The Red All Over Riddle Book’ in 1997.  The Centre for Literacy in Primary Education launched the award in 2003, and previous winners have included John Agard, Grace Nichols, Roger McGough and Jackie Kay.  It is sponsored by Travelling Books.  George (pictured) won the Faber Memorial Prize for his first collection, ‘The Slant Door’, in 1979, the T.S. Eliot Prize for his 2005 collection ‘Reel’, and the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Single Poem) for ‘Song’ in 2009.  As a translator of poetry, prose and drama from the Hungarian he has won The European Poetry Translation Prize, the Dery Prize, the Pro Cultura Hungaria medal and the Gold Star of the Hungarian Republic, as well as being twice shortlisted for the Weidenfeld Prize.  ‘In The Land of Giants’ was published by Salt last year.

‘Merivel’, the most recent novel by UEA alumna Rose Tremain, has been included on the shortlist of six novels in contention for the 2013 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction.  Rose graduated from UEA with a BA in English in 1967.  During her degree she was taught by both Angus Wilson and Malcolm Bradbury, and later returned to the university to teach alongside Bradbury on the Creative Writing MA.  She was awarded an honorary doctorate in 2000 and was made a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours of 2007.  Earlier this month she was announced as the University’s new Chancellor.  The Walter Scott Prize is sponsored by the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch and is worth £25,000 to the winner.  It will be awarded at the Borders Book Festival in June.

‘The Human Script’ is the first novel by UEA alumnus Johnny Rich and is launched this month as the inaugural publication of the new digital imprint Red Button Publishing.  Johnny graduated from the MA in Creative Writing at UEA in 1999 and has since developed a career in public relations, media, and as a consultant in Higher Education.  He was the founder of Push, an independent guide to UK universities, and is the Editor-in-Chief of Real World, an online magazine for graduate recruitment.  His website can be found here: http://www.johnnyrich.com

UEA alumna Sarah Ridgard has been longlisted for this year’s Desmond Elliott Prize for her debut novel, ‘Seldom Seen', which was published by Hutchinson last year. Sarah (pictured) graduated with a distinction from the MA in Creative Writing (Prose Fiction) at UEA in 2002, having previously worked for Amnesty International, Oxfam and Oxford University Press. In 2009 she was one of the winners of the Arts Council-funded Escalator Literature Award, and was last year selected for the Amazon Rising Stars competition. The Desmond Elliott Prize is worth £10,000 to the winner and was previously awarded to UEA alumna Anjali Joseph in 2011. This year’s shortlist will be announced on 23rd May, and the winner on 27th June.

‘Idiopathy’ is the debut novel by UEA alumnus Sam Byers and is published by Fourth Estate this week.  Sam was born in 1979 and graduated from the MA in Creative Writing (Prose Fiction) in 2003.  He is currently completing a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing under the supervision of Giles Foden and Rachel Potter.  He is a regular reviewer for the TLS and has previously published fiction in Tank, Blank Pages, and Granta, where an extract from ‘Idiopathy’ was featured last year in an issue themed ‘Britain’.  Earlier this year ‘Idiopathy’ was included as one of the Waterstones 11, an annual list of the eleven best debut novels of the year, while Sam himself was chosen as one of the Daily Telegraph’s ‘Five Young Novelists for 2013’.

‘My Criminal World’ is the new novel by UEA Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing Henry Sutton and has just been published by Harvill Secker.  Henry is the co-convenor of the MA in Creative Writing (Prose Fiction).  He is the author of five previous novels, most recently ‘Get Me Out Of Here’ (2011), a collection of short stories, ‘Thong Nation’, and is the co-author of a crime novel, ‘First Frost’, under the pseudonym James Henry.  His work has been published in many languages and he was awarded the J. B. Priestley Award in 2004.  ‘Kids’ Stuff’ was the recipient of an Arts Council Writers’ Award in 2002, and was adapted a stage play in Riga, Latvia.  Previously a Writing Fellow at UEA, he is also a former literary editor of Esquire magazine, former books editor of the Daily Mirror, and has judged numerous literary awards, including the John Lewellyn Rhys Prize and the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year. 

‘The Collector of Lost Things’ is the new novel by UEA alumnus Jeremy Page and has just been published by Little Brown.  Jeremy graduated from the Creative Writing MA in 1994 and returned as a Writing Fellow in 2010 and as a tutor on the MA programme in 2011.  He has worked as a script editor for the BBC, Channel 4 and Film Four, and is currently working on an original screenplay for Working Title TV.  His first novel, ‘Salt’, was published by Penguin in 2007 and shortlisted for the Jelf First Novel Award and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize.  His second novel, ‘ The Wake’, won the Fiction prize in the 2009 East Anglian Book Awards and was shortlisted for the New Angle Prize for East Anglian Literature.

UEA alumni Naomi Alderman and Adam Foulds have been included in Granta’s magazine’s list of the twenty best young British novelists under the age of forty.  Naomi (pictured) graduated from the MA in Creative Writing (Prose Fiction) in 2003.  Her first novel, ‘Disobedience' (2006) won the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award and the Orange Broadband Prize for New Writers.  Her second novel ‘The Lessons' (2010) was serialised for BBC Radio 4's Book at Bedtime and her third, ‘The Liars' Gospel', was published last year, when she was also selected by the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative to be mentored for one year by Margaret Atwood.  Adam graduated from the MA in Creative Writing (Poetry) in 2000 and published his first novel, ‘The Truth About These Strange Times’, in 2007, winning a Betty Trask Award and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. His verse novella, ‘The Broken Word’ (2008) won the Costa Poetry Award, the Jerwood Aldeburgh Prize and a Somerset Maugham Award. His most recent novel, ‘The Quickening Maze’, was shortlisted for the inaugural Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction and for the 2009 Man Booker Prize, and was the winner of the Encore Award, the South Bank Show literature prize and the European Union Prize for Literature. 

UEA alumna Rose Tremain has been appointed as the University’s new Chancellor, succeeding Sir Brandon Gough, who died last year.  Rose (pictured) was among the earliest students to study at UEA, graduating with a BA in English in 1967.  During her degree she was taught by both Angus Wilson and Malcolm Bradbury, and later returned to the university to teach alongside Bradbury on the Creative Writing MA between 1989 and 1995.  She was awarded an honorary doctorate in 2000 and was made a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours of 2007.  Her first novel ‘Sadler’s Birthday’ was published in 1976, and she has since published eleven more novels, four collections of short stories, one book for children and plays for radio and television.  She won both the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award for ‘Music and Silence’ in 1999 and the Orange Prize for ‘The Road Home’ in 2007.  She will be the first writer, the first woman, and the first UEA graduate to take on the role of Chancellor.

UEA alumnus Andrew Miller has been shortlisted for this year’s IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for his novel ‘Pure’.  The award is worth €100,000 to the winner, and ‘Pure’ is the only British title to be nominated.  The winner will be announced on 6th June.  Andrew (pictured) graduated from the MA in Creative Writing in 1990, and published his first novel ‘Ingenious Pain’ in 1997, which went on to win that year’s IMPAC Dublin Literary Award as well as the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and Italy’s Grinzane Cavour Prize.  He has since written four novels: ‘Casanova’ (1998), Oxygen (2001), which was shortlisted for the Whitebread Novel of the Year Award and the Booker Prize, The Optimists (2005), and One Morning Like A Bird (2008).  ‘Pure’ was published in 2011 and was the winner of 2012 Costa Book Award.

UEA alumnus Ashley Stokes has been longlisted for the 2013 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award for his debut collection 'The Syllabus of Errors', which was published by Unthank Books earlier this year.  Ashley (pictured) graduated from the MA in Creative Writing (Prose Fiction) in 1997.  He has published short fiction and reviews in a number of journals and national newspapers, and has taught and directed creative writing in UEA's School of Continuing Education, as well as teaching on the undergraduate programmes at UEA and at Norwich University College of the Arts.  His first novel 'Touching the Starfish' was published by Unthank in 2010. A shortlist of six books will be selected in May and the winner of the Frank O’Connor Short Story Award announced in July.  The richest prize available for a collection of short fiction, the winner will be presented with 25,000 euros at the Cork International Short Story Festival in September. 

‘The Story I’m Thinking Of’ by UEA student Jonathan Gibbs has been shortlisted for the first annual White Review Short Story Prize.  Supported by the Jerwood Foundation, and worth £2,500 to the winner, the prize is judged by Booker-shortlisted author Deborah Levy, literary agent Karolina Sutton and editor Alex Bowler.  The winner will be announced on 25th April, and in addition to the cash prize the winning story will be published in The White Review.  Jonathan (pictured) graduated from the MA in Creative Writing (Prose Fiction) at UEA in 2009 and is currently completing his PhD in Creative and Critical Writing.  He teaches on the undergraduate programme at UEA, and is a regular reviewer of literary fiction for the Independent, the Financial Times, The Daily Telegraph and the TLS.

UEA Creative Writing alumnus Kazuo Ishiguro has been announced at the winner of the 2013 Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award.  Previous winners of the award include Nobel Prize laureates Saul Bellow and Toni Morrison, and fellow UEA alumnus Ian McEwan.  Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1954 and moved to England at an early age.  He joined the Creative Writing MA in 1979, where he began work on what would become his first novel, ‘A Pale View of the Hills’.  Subsequent publications include ‘An Artist of the Floating World (1986), which won the Whitbread Prize and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, The Remains of the Day (1989), which won the Booker Prize and was adapted for cinema, ‘When We Were Orphans (2000), which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize (2000)  and ‘Never Let Me Go (2005), which was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize and adapted for cinema.  He was included in the Granta list of Best of Young British Novelists in both 1983 and 1993.  ‘Never Let Me Go’ will be distributed to every new undergraduate joining UEA this coming autumn.

‘22 Britannia Road', the debut novel by UEA graduate Amanda Hodgkinson, has been shortlisted for the third biennial New Angle Prize for Literature.  The award is worth £2,000 and celebrates fiction, poetry and literary non-fiction set in or inspired by the East Anglian region.  Amanda (pictured) graduated from the UEA Creative Writing MA in 2001 and now lives in south west France, where she is a columnist for La Dépèche du Midi newspaper in Toulouse.  ‘22 Britannia Road' was published by Fig Tree (Penguin) in 2011 and has been sold in America, France, Italy, Greece and Holland.  It was selected for the inaugural ‘Waterstone's 11' promotion of outstanding first novels.  The winner of the New Angle Prize will be announced on 4th September.

‘L'Étranger’, a new short story by UEA alumna Eliza Robertson, has been included in a shortlist of five stories selected from over 2,400 entries for Canada’s CBC Short Story Prize.  Eliza (pictured) graduated with distinction from the MA in Creative Writing (Prose Fiction) at UEA in 2012, and was the recipient of the Booker Foundation scholarship.  She was last year shortlisted for the Willesden Herald International Short Story Prize and has previously been shortlisted for the McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize and Canada’s National Magazine Awards.  The winner of the CBC Short Story Prize will be announced on March 26 and will receive $6,000, a two-week writing residency at The Banff Centre, and publication in Air Canada’s ‘enRoute’ magazine.  The other finalists will each receive $1,000 and publication on the Canada Writes website.

'The Kills' is a 'digital-first' sequence of four novels by UEA alumnus Richard House and is launched this week by Picador with the release of 'Sutler' in an enhanced edition containing audio and video created by the author.  'Sutler' will be followed by 'The Massive', 'The Kill' and 'The Hit'.  Richard (pictured) graduated from the UEA Creative and Critical Writing PhD in 2008 and now teaches Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham.  He is the author of two previous novels, 'Bruiser' (1997) and 'Uninvited' (1998), and is a member of the Chicago-based art collaborative, 'Haha', whose work has appeared at the New Museum in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and the Venice Biennale.  He is also the editor of the digital magazine 'Fatboy Review'.  The website for 'The Kills' can be found at this address: www.panmacmillan.com/thekills

‘Bolt’, a new short story by current UEA student Thomas Morris, has been shortlisted for the international Willesden Herald short story competition, which is worth £300 to the winner and is this year judged by prizewinning American short story writer David Means.  Thomas (almost pictured) has previously published short fiction in The Irish Times, The Moth, and ETO, and in 2012 received an Emerging Artist Bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland.  He is currently enrolled on the MA in Creative Writing (Prose Fiction) at UEA, where he is working on a collection of stories, and a novel, ‘Second Best: The Diaries of a Substitute Goalkeeper’.  Also shortlisted for the Willesden prize is UEA’s 2005 Charles Pick Writing Fellow, Alistair Daniel, who was recently nominated for the Scott Prize for best short story collection.

‘The Last Runaway’ is the seventh novel by UEA graduate Tracy Chevalier and is published by HarperCollins this month.  Tracy (pictured) was born in Washington DC and moved to English in 1984.  She graduated from the UEA Creative Writing MA in 1994 and published her first novel ‘The Virgin Blue’ in 1996.  Her second novel the ‘Girl With a Pearl Earring’ was published in 1999 and was adapted for cinema, the film receiving three academy award nominations in 2004.  Her sixth novel ‘Remarkable Creatures’ was published in 2009 and longlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

‘If This Was A Love Story’ by UEA writer Armando Celayo has been selected as the winner of the inaugural Salt Prize for Best Individual Flash Fiction.  The competition is international and worth £500 to the winner.  Armando (pictured) graduated from UEA’s MA in Creative Writing (Prose Fiction) in 2010 and is currently completing a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing while working on his novel ‘For The Recovery of Lost Things’. He was last year selected as one of the winners of the Escalator writers’ mentoring scheme.  Jenna Butler, who graduated from UEA’s MA in Creative Writing (Poetry) in 2004, is one of the runners-up for the Salt Prize for Best Individual Poem, while Alistair Daniel, the 2005 Charles Pick Writing Fellow at UEA, is shortlisted for the Scott Prize for best short story collection.

Current UEA student Krishan Coupland has been placed second in the inaugural Poetry Book Society Student Poetry Competition for his poem ‘3:46PM’.  He was also Highly Commended for another poem, ‘Emergency Exit’.  Krishan (pictured) joined UEA this year as a part-time student on the Creative Writing (Prose Fiction) MA, having achieved First Class Honours in his Creative Writing BA at Staffordshire University.  He was the winner of the 2011 Manchester Fiction Prize for his short story ‘Days Necrotic’.

UEA alumnus Toby Litt and current UNESCO City of Literature Visiting Professor Ali Smith have been shortlisted for this year’s Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award.  Toby (pictured) graduated from the UEA MA in Creative Writing (Prose Fiction) in 1995 and was included in the 2003 Granta list of Best of Young British Novelists.  He is the author of nine novels – most recently ‘King Death’ (2010) - and two collections of short fiction.  He is nominated for his story ‘Call It “The Bug” Because I Have No Time to Think of a Better Title’.  Ali Smith joined UEA this semester as a visiting professor, having previously served as a Writing Fellow in 1999, and contributes to the teaching of the MA in Prose Fiction.  Her 2001 novel ‘Hotel World’ was shortlisted for both the Orange Prize and the Man Booker Prize, while her 2004 novel ‘The Accidental’ won the 2005 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award.  She is shortlisted for her story ‘The Beholder’.  The award is worth £30,000 to the winner, the biggest prize in the world for a single short story, with the five other shortlisted writers each receiving £1,000.  The winner will be announced on 22nd March.

‘Five Star Billionaire’ is the third novel by UEA graduate Tash Aw and is published by Fourth Estate this week.  Tash (pictured) was born in Taipei to Malaysian parents and grew up in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.  He graduated from the UEA MA in Creative Writing (Prose Fiction) in 2003.  His first novel ‘The Harmony Silk Factory’ was published in 2005 and won the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Novel.  It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and longlisted for the International Impac Dublin Award.  His second novel ‘Map of the Invisible World’ was published in 2009.  His fiction has been translated into 23 languages.

‘Three Birds’ by UEA playwright Janice Okoh will receive its world premiere at the Royal Exchange Theatre in London this month before transferring to the Bush Theatre in London from 20 March - 20 April.  Janice (pictured) graduated from the Scriptwriting strand of UEA's MA in Creative Writing in 2008. Her previous works include ‘Egusi Soup', which premiered at the 2009 Hotbed Festival and was toured by Menagerie, and ‘SE8', which was broadcast in the Afternoon Play slot on BBC Radio 4 in 2010.  Janice a runner-up for the 2011 Verity Bargate Award for ‘The Real House', and was the 2011 winner of the £16,000 Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting for ‘Three Birds’.

Three UEA writers have won prizes in the 2012 Café Writers Open Poetry Competition, judged by acclaimed poet Ian Duhig.  Jane Monson (pictured) was awarded second prize in the competition for her prose poem ‘Beam of Light’.  Jane graduated from the UEA MA in Creative Writing (Poetry) in 2000 and subsequently gained a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing from the University of Cardiff. Her first collection ‘Speaking Without Tongues’ was published by Cinnamon Press in 2010.  Colette Sensier won third prize for her poem ‘I Have My Mother’s Eyes’. Colette is currently studying for her MA in Creative Writing (Prose Fiction) at UEA.  She published her debut collection of poetry ‘How Many Camels Is Too Many?’ last year, and was one of five young writers selected for the Flight 2012 mentoring scheme organized by Spread the Word and run in partnership with the Poetry School.  Tim Clare was awarded the prize for Funniest Poem for ‘Mango’. Tim graduated from the Creative Writing (Prose) MA in 2004 and is the author of the memoir ‘We Can't All Be Astronauts', which won the Biography category of the 2009 East Anglian Book Awards, and the collection ‘Pub Stuntman’, published last year by Nasty Little Press.  He is a member of the poetry collective Aisle16, and is a regular performer of stand-up poetry at both literary and music festivals. 

Three graduates of the UEA Creative Writing MA have been longlisted for the third biennial New Angle Prize for Literature.  The award is worth £2,000 to the winner (and £500 for the runner-up) and celebrates fiction, poetry and literary non-fiction set in or inspired by the East Anglian region.  Esther Morgan graduated from the MA in Creative Writing (Poetry) in 1998 and is nominated for her third collection of poetry, ‘Grace’, which was published by Bloodaxe in 2011 and was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize last year.  Amanda Hodgkinson graduated from the MA in Creative Writing (Prose Fiction) in 2001 and is nominated for her first novel ’22 Britannia Road’, which was published by Penguin in 2011.  Sarah Ridgard (pictured) graduated from the MA in 2002 and is nominated for her first novel ‘Seldom Seen’, which was published by Hutchinson last year and shortlisted for the Amazon Rising Stars award.  The shortlist for the prize will be announced on 18th March and the winner on 4th September. 

‘Worthless Men’ is the new novel by UEA Director of Creative Writing, Andrew Cowan, and is published by Sceptre this week.  Andrew is the author of four previous novels. ‘Pig’ won a Betty Trask Award, the Authors' Club First Novel Award, the Ruth Hadden Memorial Prize, a Scottish Arts Council Book Award and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award and was shortlisted for five other awards.  ‘Common Ground’ and ‘Crustaceans’ both received competitive Arts Council bursaries. ‘What I Know’ was a recipient of an Arts Council Writers' Award and was published in 2005.  His guidebook ‘The Art of Writing Fiction’ was published in 2011. Andrew is himself a graduate of the UEA Creative Writing MA, and now teaches on the undergraduate and postgraduate Creative Writing programmes, including the MA in Prose Fiction.

‘Infinite Sky’ is the first novel by UEA alumna Chelsey Flood and is published by Simon and Schuster this week.  Chelsey (pictured) was born in 1983 in Derby, and obtained a BA in English from the University of Falmouth before joining the MA in Creative Writing (Prose Fiction) at UEA.  She graduated in 2010 as the winner of that year’s Curtis Brown Award for best Creative Writing dissertation.  Chelsey began writing ‘Infinite Sky’ during her MA year, and worked on the novel under the guidance of Bernardine Evaristo as part of the Arvon-Jerwood mentoring scheme and subsequently with the assistance of an Arts Council Award.

‘Calcutta: Two Years in the City’ is the latest title by UEA Professor of Contemporary Literature, Amit Chaudhuri, and offers a memoir of two years (2009–2011) in the city of his birth.  It is published this month by Union Books.  Amit is the author of five highly acclaimed novels: ‘A Strange and Sublime Address’, ‘Afternoon Raag’, ‘Freedom Song’, ‘A New World’, and ‘The Immortals’. He is also a poet, an acclaimed musician, and a highly regarded critic, and has edited ‘The Picador Book of Modern Indian Literature’. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and last year won India’s £30,000 Infosys Prize for outstanding contribution to the Humanities in Literary Studies.  He teaches on the MA and PhD programmes in Creative Writing at UEA. 

Four graduates of the UEA Creative Writing MA are among the ten winners of this year’s Escalator Literature Competition, organized by Writers’ Centre Norwich.  Megan Bradbury (pictured) graduated from the Prose Fiction MA in 2005 and is the current Charles Pick Writing Fellow at UEA. Meghan Purvis graduated from the Poetry MA in 2005 and subsequently completed a PhD in Creative & Critical Writing under the supervision of George Szirtes.  She was the winner of the 2011 Times Stephen Spender Prize for poetry in translation.  Lucy Yates graduated from the Prose Fiction MA in 2006 and has since published short fiction in a range of anthologies.  She is currently working on her first novel, ‘From the Mountains Descended Night’, which explores one of the biggest literary scandals of the eighteenth century.  Sue Healy graduated from the Prose Fiction MA in 2009 and has since won a number of prizes for her writing, including the Molly Keane Memorial Award, the HISSAC Prize, the Sussex Playwrights’ Prize, the Meridian Prize, the Waterford-Annaghmakerrig Award and the Ted O’Regan Arts Award.  The Escalator scheme is open to writers from the East of England and offers a year’s worth of mentoring from established writers Tobias Hill, Natasha Cooper, Cathi Unsworth, David Rain and Michelle Spring.  The winners will receive coaching to support applications for grants, attend professional development workshops, and receive introductions to agents and publishers.

‘The Syllabus of Errors: Twelve Stories about Obsession, Loss and Getting in a State’ is the debut collection of short stories by UEA alumnus Ashley Stokes and is published by Unthank Books this month.  Ashley was born in Carshalton, Surrey in 1970 and educated at St Anne's College, Oxford, before joining the UEA MA in Creative Writing in 1997.  He has published short fiction and reviews in a number of journals and national newspapers, and has taught and directed creative writing in UEA's School of Continuing Education, as well as teaching on the undergraduate programmes at UEA and at Norwich University College of the Arts. 

‘Inheritance’ is the first novel by Balli Kaur Jaswal and is published by Sleepers Publishing in Australia this week.  Balli (pictured) was the David TK Wong Writing Fellow at UEA in 2007-08 and began her novel during her time at the university.  She grew up in Singapore, Japan, Russia and the Philippines, and studied creative writing at Hollins University and George Mason University before joining UEA.  Following her Fellowship she moved to Singapore and worked as a journalist for a business magazine before moving to Australia, where she now lives.  ‘Inheritance’ will be launched in Melbourne on 7th February.

Inspired by the libretto to Puccini's ‘Tosca’, ‘Tosca’s Kiss’ is a new 90-minute play by current UEA student Craig Warner and is to be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on Sunday 3rd February.  Craig (pictured) is currently completing the MA in Creative Writing (Prose Fiction) at UEA.  His previous credits include the theatrical and radio adaptations of Patricia Highsmith’s novel ‘Strangers on a Train’, which toured internationally, the radio plays ‘By Where The Old Shed Used To Be’ and ‘Figure With Meat’ which won the 1989 and 1991 BBC/Methuen Giles Cooper Radio Best Play of the Year Award, the screenplays ‘The Mists of Avalon’, which was shortlisted for the 2001 Writers’ Guild Awards, ‘The Queen’s Sister’ which was shortlisted for the 2006 BAFTA Best Single Drama award, and ‘The Last Days of the Lehman Brothers’, which was broadcast on BBC2 and won the Seoul International Drama Awards Best Writer prize in 2010.

UEA graduate Avril Joy has won the inaugural Costa Short Story Award, worth £3,500, for her story ‘Millie and Bird’.  Avril (pictured) gained a BA in History of Art at UEA in 1972, and published her first novel ‘The Sweet Track’ in 2007.  She worked for several years as a teacher in HMP Low Newton, on the outskirts of Durham, and in 2003 won a Northern Promise Award from New Writing North.  The winner of the Costa Short Story Award was chosen by public vote after a judging panel had selected a shortlist of six.

‘Ten Things I’ve Learnt About Love’ is the debut novel by UEA alumna Sarah Butler and is published this week by Picador.  Sarah (pictured) graduated from the UEA Creative Writing MA in 2003 and has previously published her short fiction in journals, anthologies and online, including Pulp.Net, Tales of the Decongested, Litro, Sheffield Hallam’s ‘Matter 12’, Picador’s ‘Book of 40’, and Tindal Street’s ‘Roads Ahead’. She runs UrbanWords, a consultancy that develops literature projects engaging with regeneration and urban renewal, and has recently held residencies at Great Ormond Street hospital, and the London Underground Central Line, which resulted in the publication ‘Central line Stories’, produced in collaboration with London Underground staff.  ‘Ten Things I’ve Learnt About Love’ will be published in twelve languages around the world. 

‘Calon: A Journey to the Heart of Welsh Rugby’ is the latest title by UEA alumnus Owen Sheers and documents his year as Writer in Residence for the Welsh Rugby Union.  It is published by Faber and Faber this week.  Owen graduated from the MA in Creative Writing (Poetry) in 1998 and published his first collection of poetry, ‘The Blue Book’, in 2000.  His first work of non-fiction, ‘The Dust Diaries’, was the Arts Council of Wales Book of the Year in 2005, while his second collection of poetry, ‘Skirrid Hill’, won the 2006 Somerset Maugham Award.  He is the author of three other books, including the novel ‘Resistance’ (2007), and numerous titles for radio, stage and screen, including ‘The Two Worlds of Charlie F’, which was funded by the British Legion and was the subject of a BBC 1 ‘Imagine’ documentary.  It won the Edinburgh Festival Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award in 2012.

A quarter of the nominees for this year’s £30,000 Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story are graduates of the UEA Creative Writing MA.  Chosen from over 500 entries, the longlist includes stories by Toby Litt, Adam Foulds, Mark McNay and CD Rose.  Toby Litt, who graduated from the MA in 1995, is selected for ‘Call it “The Bug” Because I Have No Time to Think of a Better Title’.  He is the author of nine novels and two collections of stories and was also longlisted for the award last year.  Adam Foulds, who graduated in 2000, is nominated for ‘Tunnelling’.  His first novel, ‘The Truth About These Strange Times’ (2007) won the Betty Trask Award and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award.  ‘The Broken Word’ (2008) was the winner of the Costa Poetry Award, the Jerwood Aldeburgh Prize and the Somerset Maugham Award, while  ‘The Quickening Maze’ (2009) won the Encore Award, the European Union Literature Prize and the South Bank Show Literature Prize.  Mark McNay (pictured) graduated in 2004 and is nominated for ‘Ten Years Too Late’.  His first novel ‘Fresh’ (2007) won the Arts Foundation Prize for New Fiction and was shortlisted for three other literary awards, while ‘Under Control’ (2008) was shortlisted for the Aye Write! Bank of Scotland Prize for Scottish Fiction.  CD Rose graduated in 2007 is shortlisted for ‘Arkady Who Couldn't See And Artem Who Couldn't Hear’.  He has published numerous short stories since graduation, most recently ‘A Publisher Surveys the Changing Literary Scene’ in the collection ‘Unthology 3’, and is currently working on a PhD in the short story at Edge Hill University.  Also nominated are Ali Smith, currently a visiting professor at UEA, and Graham Swift, who was appointed as a Distinguished Writing Fellow at UEA in 2008.  The shortlist for the award will be announced on 24 February, and the winner at The Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival on 22 March.

Debut novels by two UEA writers are among the eleven titles voted the ‘debut literary stars of 2013’ by Waterstones booksellers. BBC National Short Story Award winner DW (Dave) Wilson's first novel ‘Ballistics’ is included along with ‘Idiopathy’ by Sam Byers. Dave (pictured) graduated from the UEA Creative Writing MA (Prose Fiction) in 2010 and is currently completing his PhD at UEA, as is Sam, who graduated from the MA in 2003. ‘Idiopathy’ will be published by Fourth Estate on 25 April 25, while ‘Ballistics’ will be published by Bloomsbury on 1 August. Dave’s debut collection of short stories, ‘Once You Break A Knuckle’, was published last year and was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the British Columbia Book Prize and longlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award.

‘Dear World & Everyone In It’ is a new poetry anthology representing the work of over sixty young poets currently writing in the UK. It is edited by Nathan Hamilton, who previously curated a series of young poet features for The Rialto, and is published by Bloodaxe this month with a launch event at The Poetry Library at the Royal Festival Hall in London on 24 January. Nathan (pictured) graduated from UEA’s English and American Literature BA in 2004, and completed the Creative Writing MA (Poetry) in 2005. He is currently undertaking a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing at UEA under the supervision of Jeremy Noel-Tod. He runs Egg Box Publishing and is chairman of the board of Inpress, representing over forty independent publishers. His poetry and criticism have appeared in The Guardian, The Spectator, The Rialto, Five Dials, The Manhattan Review and The Wolf, among others, and he co-edits the ‘antholog-zine’ series for emerging poetry, ‘Stop Sharpening Your Knives’. ‘Dear World & Everyone In It’ includes new work by poets as diverse as Ben Borek, Tim Cockburn, Amy De'Ath, Jim Goar, Meiron Jordan, Katharine Kilalea, Luke Kennard, Agnes Lehoczky, Sandeep Parmar, Sam Riviere, Angus Sinclair, Emily Toder, Jack Underwood and Tom Warner, among many others.

Current UEA student Sam Byers is profiled today in the Daily Telegraph as one of ‘five young novelists for 2013’, in anticipation of the publication of his first novel, ‘Idiopathy’. Sam completed his MA in Creative Writing at UEA in 2003 and is currently undertaking a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing under the supervision of Giles Foden. ‘Some Other Katherine’, an extract from the novel, was included in the most recent issue of Granta magazine, whose theme was ‘Britain’. ‘Idiopathy’ will be published by Fourth Estate in April.

The Booker-shortlisted novelist Ali Smith has joined the UEA Creative Writing programme this semester as a UNESCO City of Literature visiting professor. She will be working with Creative Writing and Translation students, offering individual tutorials and seminars, as well as hosting a literary event in the city in association with the British Centre for Literary Translation (BCLT) and Writers' Centre Norwich (WCN). Norwich recently became England’s first UNESCO City of Literature, joining Edinburgh, Melbourne, Iowa City, Dublin and Reykjavik, and it is intended that this permanent designation will be marked by the annual appointment by UEA of two visiting professors of international reputuation. The playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker was the inaugural professor in the Autumn 2012 semester. Ali Smith (pictured) was shortlisted for both the Orange Prize and the Man Booker Prize for her 2001 novel ‘Hotel World’ and for her 2004 novel ‘The Accidental’, which went on to win the 2005 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award. Her most recent publication is 'Artful', a partly fictionalised meditation on art and literature. Her appointment marks the continuation of an association with UEA that began with her appointment as a Writing Fellow in 1999.

To mark the 80th anniversary of Malcolm Bradbury's birth, Picador are reissuing six of his novels with new introductions by David Lodge, Margaret Drabble, Ian McEwan, Giles Foden and John Boyne. In 1970 Malcolm co-founded (with Angus Wilson) the UEA Creative Writing programme, the first such course in the UK, and taught on the MA until his retirement in 1995. A prolific and influential scholar and author, he wrote over 40 books of non-fiction and criticism, as well as numerous screenplays for television, and seven novels, including 'The History Man', which was serialised for BBC television, and 'Rates of Exchange', which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He was awarded a CBE in 1991 for services to literature, and knighted in 2000. A celebration of his achievements was held at UEA in November, with readings and reminiscences from David Lodge, Margaret Drabble, Giles Foden, John Boyne and Chris Bigsby. The YouTube recording of the event can be found on YouTube.

‘Chamber Music’ is the second Henry Bane crime thriller by UEA alumnus Tom Benn and is published by Jonathan Cape this week. Tom (pictured) was born in 1987 and grew up in Stockport. He graduated from the UEA undergraduate programme in 2009, and was that year’s recipient of the Malcolm Bradbury bursary to undertake the Creative Writing MA, which he completed in 2010. His first novel, ‘The Doll Princess’, was published in 2012, and was longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Crime Writers' Association John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger, and shortlisted for the Portico Prize. Tom will be reading from ‘Chamber Music’ at the UEA Drama Studio on Thursday 7th February.

Current UEA creative writing student Julia Stuart has secured a two-book deal with Russian publisher Azbooka-Atticus for her two most recent novels. Julia (pictured) is currently completing her MA in Creative Writing (Prose Fiction) at UEA. She is the author of three novels. Her first, ‘The Matchmaker of Périgord’, was published in the UK in 2007, and was longlisted for Spread the Word: Books to Talk About 2008, a World Book Day award. It has been adapted for film by Andrew Birkin who wrote and directed The Cement Garden, based on the novel by Ian McEwan. In 2010 her second novel, ‘Balthazar Jones and the Tower of London Zoo’, was published in the UK. In America it was published as ‘The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise’ and became a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, and an NRP Best Book of the Year. It was picked for the Obamas’ holiday reading, which became an international news story. Her most recent novel, ‘The Pigeon Pie Mystery’, was published in America in 2012, and was selected as a Book of the Week, as well as an ‘Unputdownable Mystery’, by Oprah.com. It will also be published in France, Italy, Taiwan, Portugal and Russia. Julia’s website can be found here: www.juliastuart.com