HOUSE OF ASHES longlisted for the OCM Bocas Prize 2015

Monique Roffey’s haunting novel HOUSE OF ASHES has been longlisted for the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature 2015, in the fiction category. The winners in each category will be announced on 1 April, and the Prize will be presented on Saturday 2 May, during the fifth annual NGC Bocas Lit fest in Port of Spain. The overall winner will receive a US$10,000 award with smaller awards for the other winners. Also nominated in the fiction category are Marlon James and Tiphanie Yanique.

Monique Roffey previously won the prize for her novel ARCHIPELAGO. HOUSE OF ASHES was shortlisted for the 2015 Costa Book Awards in the Novel category.

HOUSE OF ASHES is Roffey’s third Caribbean-set novel, again adeptly exploring the personal and political against the troubled backdrop of a fictional island ‘paradise’. Inspired by real events, it is haunting story of Ashes and Breeze, two disaffected young men who follow the charismatic Leader into a disastrous coup. Set over the period of the siege of the House of Power, where captors and their hostages see each other’s most brutal but also most vulnerable sides, HOUSE OF ASHES is about fathers and sons, about failures of leadership – but also about how we confront our shadow sides, and about coming through wreckage committed to peace.

Roffey’s THE WHITE WOMAN ON THE GREEN BICYCLE was shortlisted for the Orange (now Baileys) Women’s Prize for Fiction. ARCHIPELAGO was also shortlisted for the 2014 Orion Prize.

Visit Monique's website here.

Praise for HOUSE OF ASHES:

‘Deploying the deep, humane wisdom that has become [Roffey’s] hallmark… the novel delivers its final, bittersweet coup with a fearlessness and grace that richly satisfies.’ – Liz Jensen, The Guardian

‘Grimly absorbing... Roffey’s knuckle-whitening novel goes to the heart of questions of political temptation and folly; it grips from beginning to end.’ – Ian Thompson, Telegraph

‘[a] laudable piece of literary work.’ – Raoul Pantin, Trinidad Express

‘Monique Roffey’s tragicomic take on this almost forgotten episode, strips revolution of any pretence of glamour… as funny as it is unsettling.’ – David Shaftel, Financial Times

Moomins on the Riviera selected for the New York International Children's Film Festival

The 18th annual New York International Children’s Film Festival has chosen the hand drawn animation feature film Moomins on the Riviera for their official competition selection. The film will screen on Saturday March 14th at 1.30 pm in the School of Visual Arts Theatre in Manhattan. 

The film is based on Tove Jansson’s original comic strips written for London Evening News in 1955. The film premiered in London Film Festival in October 2014 and has been sold to over 40 countries for theatrical distribution. The film was received extremely well in Finland during the autumn 2014, it was just released theatrically in Switzerland, starts next week in France and thereafter  in Japan with 100 copies in both territories. The English are to launch the film in May with 250 copies. 

Leslie Stewart worked on the script for this movie, Hanna Hemila is the producer, co-director and co-writer of the film (Handle Productions). The director of the film is French Xavier Picard, who is also the co-director and one of the writers. Other writers are Annina Enckell and Beata Harju.

More info about the film at: moominsontheriviera.com

Siobhan Macdonald’s TWISTED RIVER sold to Penguin US

Isobel Dixon has sold North American rights at auction to Siobhan Macdonald’s psychological thriller TWISTED RIVER to Emily Murdock Baker at Viking Penguin.

Baker said: ‘It’s so gripping and page turning, so tightly plotted. It’s fantastic, and I know it will make a great addition to the Penguin list. I think TWISTED RIVER would appeal to the same readership as THE SILENT WIFE and the Edgar Award-winning THE WICKED GIRLS.’

A compelling new ‘marriage noir’ set in Manhattan and Limerick, TWISTED RIVER tells the story of a dream holiday house-swap that goes tragically wrong. Kate and Mannix O'Brien live with their two children in a quirky house overlooking the Curragower Falls on the Shannon River in Limerick – a city where the haves and have-nots live side by side. Meanwhile, on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, the Harveys own a fashionable brownstone on Riverside Drive. For their family vacations this year, they’ve both booked in for a house-swap – and it’s one they will never forget. At the novel’s start, Oscar Harvey is opening the trunk of the car his hosts have loaned him – and finds the body of a woman. From this shocking beginning the story spools back to roots of the house swap, taking us on a gripping journey that never lets up.

Siobhan’s novel THE BLUE POOL was published in Germany by Piper last month.

Born in Cork, Siobhan studied in Galway, worked as a technical writer in Scotland for ten years, then in France, before returning to Ireland. She lives in Limerick with her husband and two sons.

Ivan Vladislavic announced as INTERNATIONAL WINDHAM CAMPBELL PRIZEWINNER

Photo credit: Minky Schlesinger

Ivan Vladislavić has won the Windham Campbell Prize. The prizewinners were announced on the 24th February in three categories –– fiction, nonfiction, and drama –– to honor and support writers anywhere in the world writing in English. The awards, which come with a $150,000 cheque, can be given for a body of work or extraordinary promise. 

In addition to Ivan Vladislavić, the 2015 winners are, in fiction: Teju Cole and Helon Habila, making it a clean sweep for African writers. In nonfiction the winners were Edmund de Waal, Geoff Dyer, and John Jeremiah Sullivan; and, in drama: Jackie Sibblies Drury, Helen Edmundson, and Debbie Tucker Green.

The Windham Campbell Prizes, which debuted in 2013, were established by Donald Windham and Sandy M. Campbell to call attention to literary achievement and provide writers with the opportunity to focus on their work independent of financial concerns. There is no submission process and winners are determined by a global group of invited nominators, a jury in each category, and a selection committee.

In September, the winners will gather from around the world at Yale (where the Prizes are based), for an international literary festival celebrating their work. All events are free and open to the public.

“The Windham Campbell Prizes were created by a writer to support other writers, said Michael Kelleher, director of the program. “Donald Windham recognized that the most significant gift he could give to another writer was time to write. In addition to the recognition prestige it confers, the prize gives them just that -- with no strings attached."

For the Mail & Guardian’s piece on Ivan’s win, click here.

Ivan was on BBC Radio 4 last month, talking about his classic non-fiction book PORTRAIT WITH KEYS for the series Writing a New South Africa for the episode ‘Johannesburg, City of Recent Arrivals’.

Ivan Vladislavić is a writer of fiction and non-fiction celebrated in his native South Africa for seeing history in the quotidian and juxtaposing the banal and the bizarre. His debut story collection MISSING PERSONS (1989) mined the dark absurdity of daily life under apartheid and was awarded the Olive Schreiner Prize. MISSING PERSONS was republished in 2010 alongside his second collection PROPAGANDA BY MONUMENTS (1996) as the single volume FLASHBACK HOTEL. These writings, along with his editorial work at Staffrider Magazine and Ravan Press, made Vladislavić a key figure of literary resistance to “the demented, divided space of apartheid.” In DOUBLE NEGATIVE (2010), Vladislavić’s protagonist wonders, “How much past can the present bear?” His post-apartheid novels have continued to explore the texture and tensions of the new South Africa with his signature humor and insight. Vladislavić has twice won the University of Johannesburg Prize, first for his nonfiction book PORTRAIT WITH KEYS: The City of Johan-nesburg Unlocked (2006) and again for DOUBLE NEGATIVE. His novel THE RESTLESS SUPERMARKET (2001) was awarded the Sunday Times Prize for Fiction. His other works include THE EXPLODED VIEW, THE LOSS LIBRARY and A LABOUR OF MOLES. He was recently appointed a Distinguished Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand. His new short story collection, 101 DETECTIVES, will be published in 2015 by Umuzi, in South Africa and in the UK by And Other Stories. Archipelago and And Other Stories will publish his novella, THE FOLLY, in the US and the UK respectively.

Past winners include novelists James Salter, Tom McCarthy, and Jim Crace; nonfiction writers Jeremy Scahill, Pankaj Mishra, and Adina Hoffman; and playwrights Stephen Adly Guirgis, Tarell Alvin McCraney, and Naomi Wallace. A full list of prize winners is available on the Windham Campbell website.

Click here to visit Ivan's website.

THE WI COOKBOOK, Celebrating 100 Years of the Women’s Institute, is Published Today

Founded in 1915, the Women’s Institute will this year be celebrating the centenary of the organisation. To coincide with this incredible achievement, THE WI COOKBOOK: The First 100 Years, is published today. The book is a delightful mix of recipes and history, tracing the story of the Women’s Institute over the last century. The book follows the growth and progress of the organisation decade by decade, presenting contemporary recipes and social developments side by side.

The WI is synonymous with great home-cooking and domestic excellence, and the organisation has a long history of publishing books. The most recent publications have included VINTAGE TEA TIME, ONE POT DISHES and TRADITIONAL FAVOURITES, all of which offer traditional WI recipe collections in keeping with the ethos of the organisation.  

For a sneaky peek at the recipes, look out for an extract in the Daily Mail Weekend magazine this weekend (7th March).

The WI COOKBOOK is published by Ebury Press.