Hamish Hamilton News
RSS feedKieron Smith, boy wins Scottish Book of the Year Award 24 June 2009
Kieron Smith, boy, by James Kelman, won the Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Award at the end of last week. The winner was announced at the Borders Book Festival in Melrose, hosted by writer and comedian Rory Bremner.
We’re delighted that this very deserving book – which the judging panel described as a ‘masterpiece’ – has won such a prestigious prize and James Kelman has said that it was an ‘honour’ to be awarded the prize.
Managed by the Scottish Arts Council (SAC), the awards are now sponsored by the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust (SMIT).
MBE for Bernardine Evaristo 15 June 2009
It’s been a more than exciting couple of weeks for HH author Bernardine Evaristo. After her novel Blonde Roots was recently selected as the winner by the youth panel of the Orange Prize 2009, she’s now just revealed that she’s been awarded an MBE by the Queen for her services to literature.
You can read about her reaction on her blog, and we at HH all add to this our warmest congratulations to Bernardine for this well-deserved mark of recognition.
Hamish authors in Story of London Festival 15 June 2009
Three of Hamish Hamilton’s most exciting London writers — Iain Sinclair, Hari Kunzru and Rachel Lichtenstein — will be appearing in an event at the Rich Mix in Bethnal Green as part of the Story of London Festival.
This is a free but ticketed event so contact the Rich Mix Box Office to find out more and reserve your place: 020 7613 7498
New Angle Prize For Literature 10 June 2009
The organisers of the New Angle Prize for literature have announced the shortlist selected by judges Ronald Blythe, Anne Parry and DJ Taylor. The award, launched by the Ipswich Institute, is for a recently published book of literary merit associated with or influenced by the region of East Anglia, and we are delighted that Notes from Walnut Tree Farm, by Roger Deakin, is one of the eight books shortlisted.
The complete shortlist is as follows:
Notes from Walnut Tree Farm by Roger Deakin (edited by Alison Hastie & Terence Blacker); Hamish Hamilton 2008
Suffolk Boy, by Alasdair Eoin Aston; Orphean Press 2009
Scapegallows, by Carol Birch; Virago Press 2007
Story of the Southwold-Walberswick Ferry by Dani Church with Anne Gander; Holm Oak publishing 2009
Crow Country by Mark Cocker; Jonathan Cape 2007
Constable in Love by Martin Gayford; Fig Tree 2009
What I Was by Meg Rosoff; Penguin Books 2008
Coke of Norfolk (1754-1842) by Susanna Wade Martins; Boydell & Brewer Ltd 2009
A Shortlist Showcase – attended by the authors or editors of all the shortlisted books – will take place at the Ipswich Institute Reading Room on July 8th. Authors and editors will read from and discuss their work at this free entry event. The final award will be presented at an evening event hosted by Paul Heiney to be held at Ickworth House, near Bury St Edmunds, on September 22nd.
Further details of the prize events and the shortlisted books can be found at www.ipswichinstitute.org.uk/NAP.html
Bernardine Evaristo is Teenage Favourite 2 June 2009
On the eve of the 2009 Orange Prize for Fiction awards ceremony, the six members of the Orange Prize youth panel have chosen Blonde Roots, by Bernardine Evaristo, as their overall winner.
The youth panel read the 20 books longlisted for the 2009 Orange Prize before meeting to choose their shortlist of six. The members have also been sharing their experiences of judging a book prize publicly online at Spinebreakers since they began reading in March.
The shortlist chosen by the youth panel was:
Girl in a Blue Dress by Gaynor Arnold, Tindal Street Press
Blonde Roots by Bernardine Evaristo, Hamish Hamilton
The Lost Dog by Michelle de Kretser, Chatto & Windus
A Mercy by Toni Morrison, Chatto & Windus
The Russian Dreambook of Colour and Flight by Gina Oscher, Portobello Books
The Flying Troutmans by Miriam Toews, Faber and Faber
The group met yesterday to decide their overall winner. The meeting was facilitated by Kate Mosse, author and Honorary Director of the Orange Prize.
“The panel, and the judging process, has exceeded every expectation we had,” commented Kate Mosse. “The quality of debate was astounding and the meetings lively, vibrant, informed and respectful. It’s been a privilege to eavesdrop on their deliberations.”
The youth panel members are Lily Dessau (16), Joe Kerridge (17), Clarissa Pabi (18), Rossana Duarte (18), Francis Gene-Rowe (18) and Max Elsworth (19).
Lily Dessau (16), said, “Blonde Roots is emotive, moving and thought-provoking. It has everything we were asked to look for – accessibility, originality and excellence – and more.”
Max Elsworth (19), added, “Blonde Roots has opened new literary doors for me – it’s a truly remarkable read.”
Salinger News 2 June 2009
We at Hamish Hamilton were delighted to learn that one of our very favourite HH authors, long absent from public life, is alive and well.
J.D. Salinger, the 90-year-old author of The Catcher in the Rye, has just launched a legal action against an author who has purportedly written a spinoff “sequel” to the acclaimed novel, the Guardian newspaper has reported. Lawyers for the author filed the lawsuit in a federal court in Manhattan, seeking to stop the publication of 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye, by a writer using the name John David California. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages and says the right to create a sequel to The Catcher in the Rye or use the character Holden Caulfield belongs only to Salinger. The lawsuit says Salinger – who has never allowed the novel to be filmed, staged or otherwise adapted – has “decidedly chosen not to exercise that right”.
Our thoughts and sympathies are with him.
Five Dials 6 22 May 2009
Now available for free download. Where else can you find John Mortimer, Jello Biafra, Arundhati Roy and Bobby Gillespie in the same issue?
Steve Toltz Scoops More Prizes... 22 May 2009
A Fraction of the Whole has been garnering more prize attention this week. As well as winning the NSW Premier’s People’s Choice Award in Australia, over here it has been shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction.
The winner will be announced at Hay and the lucky winning author will be presented with a pig.
Dave Eggers Cheers Us Up 22 May 2009
At New York’s Tribeca Rooftop this week, members of the US Authors Guild honoured Dave Eggers for his work with 826 National , the nonprofit writing and tutoring charity for young people he founded seven years ago, in the Mission District of San Francisco, at 826 Valencia Street. His speech, as reported by The New Yorker, received a standing ovation — and no wonder. How great it is to read such a celebration of something we all care so deeply about:
“To any of you who are feeling down, and saying, ‘Oh, no one’s reading anymore’: Walk into 826 on any afternoon. There are no screens there, it’s all paper, it’s all students working shoulder to shoulder invested in their work, writing down something, thinking their work might get published. They put it all on the page, and they think, ‘Well, if this person who works next to me cares so much about what I’m writing, and they’re going to publish it in their next anthology or newspaper or whatever, then I’m going to invest so much more in it.’ And then meanwhile, they’re reading more than I did at their age. …
“Nothing has changed! The written word—the love of it and the power of the written word—it hasn’t changed. It’s a matter of fostering it, fertilizing it, not giving up on it, and having faith. Don’t get down. I actually have established an e-mail address, deggers@826national.org —if you want to take it down—if you are ever feeling down, if you are ever despairing, if you ever think publishing is dying or print is dying or books are dying or newspapers are dying (the next issue of McSweeney’s will be a newspaper—we’re going to prove that it can make it. It comes out in September). If you ever have any doubt, e-mail me, and I will buck you up and prove to you that you’re wrong.”
Go England! Go Writers! 22 May 2009
Although most of our working days are spent scouring the literary world for masterpieces, we at Hamish Hamilton do find time to support a football team. We prefer underdogs and there is no greater underdog these days than the England Writers Team, a collection of novelists, essayists, science writers and playwrights, who travel the world to lose (most of the time) to German, Italian, Hungarian, Swedish, and Israeli teams. The writers did win against the Danes once (a faint memory) and last September they stormed past a ragtag group of Spanish internationals in Madrid.
Penguin is represented on the Writers Team by Hamish Hamiltonites Joe Dunthorne and Craig Taylor and well as Fig Tree novelist Patrick Neate, who managed to score three goals thanks to his solid, no-nonsense play in the aforementioned Spanish victory.
Just as the real England men’s team unveiled a dashing new kit stressing elegance and simplicity, the England Writers Team will be wearing a new white uniform for an upcoming match on the 30th of May in Norway at the Norsk Litteraturfestival in Lillehammer. The kit features our Five Dials emblem, ‘The Shoe With The Tree Growing Out Of Its Sole’, by one of our favorite artists, Nick Dewar, and calls upon one of our favorite existentialist goalkeepers, Albert Camus, to act as lucky talisman.
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