News Archive
Welsh writer Rachel Trezise wins inaugural EDS Dylan Thomas Prize
Rachel Trezise with her prize, in a dress bought on E–Bay
The winner of the £60,000 Dylan Thomas Prize announced at a glittering dinner at the Brangwyn Hall, Swansea is Rhondda-born Parthian author Rachel Trezise. The award, which is open to all published writers in the English-speaking language under the age of 30, is designed to encourage raw, creative talent worldwide. The £60,000 prize was presented by the poet’s daughter, Aeronwy Thomas, on the 92nd anniversary of his birth.
Judging panel chair, screenwriter Andrew Davies, whose television adaptations include Bleak House and Pride and Prejudice, said the final choice had been "fiercely fought over".
He said: "What I was looking for particularly was a real individual young voice, somebody whose work said "this is the new generation - watch out," somebody who’s not quite like anything else we’d quite seen before.
All six finalists came from a wide range of educational and cultural backgrounds - two Oxbridge graduates, Nick Laird and James Scudmore; American writer Liza Ward; Rachel Trezise, from the Rhondda Valleys in Wales; first-time novelist and Zimbabwe based schoolteacher Ian Holding and Belfast-born playwright Lucy Caldwell
Rachel Trezise - FRESH APPLES
Rachel Trezise was born in the Rhondda Valley in 1978. She went to Treorchy Comprehensive School and at sixteen began to produce Smack Rupunzel, a local music fanzine. She studied Journalism and English at Glamorgan University. She has also studied Irish history and geography, graduating in 2000. Her debut novel In and Out of the Goldfish Bowl was published the same year. An autobiographical account of a young girl growing up in the south Wales valleys the book was described by Time Out as “A pitiful tale, a triumphant achievement.”
Fresh Apples deals with the troubled times for the once vibrant coal Valleys of South Wales and, not least for the areas youngsters. All the widely reported problems are here in these stories but prepare to be surprised by the elegance and wit of the prose and the confidence, coolness and maturity of the tone. There is nothing provincial or self-pitying about this Wales.
The runners-up
James Scudamore - THE AMNESIA CLINIC
James Scudamore was born in 1976. After a childhood spent variously in Japan, Brazil and Ecuador (and the UK some of the time) he read Modern Languages at Oxford University. Subsequently he worked in advertising for four years, and then embarked on an MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. The Amnesia Clinic is his first novel.
The Amnesia Clinic is a story of an English schoolboy’s experience of South America, which develops into a full psychological and historical investigation of what ‘Magical Realism’ really amounts to. What are stories and myths? Do they reflect or disguise actuality? An intriguing and ambitious novel that earns its place on the list of essential reading for Latin American enthusiasts.
Lucy Caldwell - WHERE THEY WERE MISSED
Lucy Caldwell was born in Belfast in 1981. In 2005 she won the PMA Award for Most Promising Playwright, and was on attachment to the National Theatre Studio. Her first full-length play, Leaves, won the 2006 George Devine Award. Lucy Caldwell is currently under commission to write for the main stage at London’s Royal Court Theatre. She lives in East London.
Where They Were Missed uses as it’s setting the recent political and religious troubles of Northern Ireland, however the perspective is that of a curious, brave and independent teenager confronting the lies that characterize family life. The tone of the book is positive, heart-warming and intellectually robust.
Liza Ward - OUTSIDE VALENTINE
Liza Ward is 25. She was born in New York City, and holds degrees from Middlebury College and the University of Montana. Her stories have been published in the Atlantic Monthly, the Georgia Review and the Antioch Review. Her work has also been selected for the 2004 O.Henry Prize Stories and Harcourt’s 2004 Best American New Voices collection. She lives in Massachusetts.
Outside Valentine is based on a true story of murders committed in Nebraska in 1958. This ambitious novel adopts three different perspectives and time-scales as it comes to terms with the genesis and consequences of the violence. In remarkably accomplished and poetic prose, the analysis of the mindset of two young girls is beautifully sustained.
Nick Laird - UTTERLY MONKEY
Nick Laird was born in 1975 in Co. Tyrone, and studied English at the University of Cambridge, where he won the Quiller-Couch Award for creative writing. He has lived in Warsaw and Boston, where he was a visiting fellow at Harvard University, and now lives in London. His debut novel, Utterly Monkey, was published in May 2005 by Fourth Estate and has recently been awarded the Betty Trask Prize.
Utterly Monkey tells the story of Danny Williams who is doing well in the affluent, party-giving London of today but he has not been able to shrug off Northern Ireland to the extent that he had thought. His past catches up with him but the tone has been set by London and all the convincing detail is readily contained within the format of an elegant and amusing caper.
Ian Holding - UNFEELING
Ian Holding is a schoolteacher in Harare, where he continues to live, work and write. Unfeeling is his first novel. The events in the novel are based on what happened to a pupil in his school.
Unfeeling is an amazingly powerful and intense account of the suffering of one white farming family at the hands of black insurgents. Remarkably all politics are excluded as we experience the violence through the eyes of a sixteen-year old son. Certainly this is polemical but is also a memorable and effective cry for help.
For more information on the Dylan Thomas Prize, go to their website here.
