Wainwright Prize

Well, the first book I write in a new genre has just been long listed for a Wainwright Prize. This has removed any doubts I had about my future as a writer. It helped of course to work through the UEA’s amazing creative writing MA, and to have been interested in the oral historian George Ewart Evans for most of my life, but this recognition is amazing.

I’ll be on edge now until the shortlist is announced in August, and would love the invitation to London to see the finalist receive their prize. But for now, I’m just going to enjoy the flurry of interest in my book, and those of the writer whose work I’ve tried to build on with my book.

Next week will also see my publisher considering my proposal for my next book. If they say, as I suspect they will, I’ll be busy researching, travelling, interviewing, writing until well into next year. Life was an author is not meant to be easy, but it can be rewarding.