Carole Blake on Judging Panel for inaugural PEN International New Voices Award

The New Voices Award has been set up to encourage new writing in the countries in which PEN operates, and to provide a space for young and unpublished authors to submit their work.

Alongside Carole on the judging panel will be Hephzibah Anderson, Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, Sjón and Luisa Valenzuela.

The award is to be announced at the 79th PEN International Congress in Iceland on 11 September. A shortlist of three finalists will be invited to the PEN International Congress to read from their work.

For more information see the PEN International website.

Lucy Mangan shortlisted for PPA’s Columnist of the Year

Lucy Mangan has received a nomination for a prestigious PPA award, and joins eight other writers in the Columnist of the Year (Consumer Media) category for her column in Stylist. The PPA awards are highly regarded in the publishing world and permit winners and nominees to gain national recognition for their achievements.

This year's ceremony will take place at the Grosvenor House Hotel on 19th June.

Click here for Lucy's Stylist page.

Blake Friedmann's Emma Gardner and Ken Hom on shortlists for The Guild of Food Writers Awards

Emma Gardner has been nominated for the Guild of Food Writers Food Blog of the Year Award for the second year running, having won the award in the category's inaugural year. Last year's judging panel described her blog as 'stunning and very informed... her recipes are very well written and easy to follow... gorgeous'.

Ken Hom's Exploring China: A Culinary Adventure is up for both the Food Broadcast of the Year Award and the Award for Work on Food and Travel. The four-part series was broadcast on BBC Two last summer. The Telegraph wrote 'watching Hom at work was a treat'.

The results will be announced at an awards ceremony on the evening of Wednesday 29 May at the RIBA, 66 Portland Place, London. The victors will be presented with an engraved glass trophy and a prize of £500 by Guild member and host Aggie MacKenzie.

Emma Gardner's blog can be read here: Poires au Chocolat.

Margie Orford to give talk on 'The Grammar of Violence' in New York tonight

Margie Orford will be at CUNY tonight, where she will be giving a talk on writing South African Crime fiction. The event begins at 7pm and entry is free and open to the public.

For more information see Margie's website, and the CUNY site.

Praise for Margie Orford:

'Margie Orford is world-class. This is crime writing at its very best.' -- Deon Meyer

'Orford [is] top of the class of crime writing in South Africa. This is largely due to her ability to write with a sense of true humanity and yet maintain a pacy sexy style.' -- Jennifer Crocker, Cape Times

Blake Friedmann Authors in New York for the PEN America World Voices Festival

On Saturday 4 May Margie Orford and Zakes Mda will participate in what will is sure to be a lively and informative panel discussion in the PEN America World Voices Festival. The event is titled 'South Africa in Two Acts' and will address questions such as 'can literature unpack question of corruption from a legacy of racism?' and 'how does crime fiction explore the unique challenges facing the most powerful economy on the continent?'. They will be joined by Peter Godwin, a war correspondent for the Sunday Times and the BBC, and the novelist and short story writer Siphiwo Mahala.

The event will be held in the Frederick P. Rose Auditorium, 41 Cooper Square. For more information see the PEN America site.

Margie Orford, author of the Clare Hart crime series, is also appearing at other events in New York this week: she will deliver a talk on The Grammar of Violence at CUNY on Wednesday May 1, and she will feature at 'Literary Safari' at the Westbeth Center for the Arts on Friday 4 May, which is also a PEN America event. 

Praise for Margie Orford:

'Margie Orford is world-class. This is crime writing at its very best.' -- Deon Meyer

'Orford [is] top of the class of crime writing in South Africa. This is largely due to her ability to write with a sense of true humanity and yet maintain a pacy sexy style.' -- Jennifer Crocker,  Cape Times

Praise for Zakes Mda:

'A voice for which one should feel not only affection but admiration' -- The New York Times
 
'For a long time, white writers dominated South African literature - Paton, Brink, Gordimer, Coetzee. Post-apartheid, Zakes Mda, looks like the great South African novelist of his generation, a writer rich in both imagination and ironic political attitude.' -- The Philadelphia Inquirer