Anneliese Mackintosh wins The Green Carnation Prize for ANY OTHER MOUTH

Anneliese making her acceptance speech

At a great event at Foyles’ flagship Charing Cross branch on Friday, The Green Carnation Prize was awarded to Anneliese Mackintosh’s ANY OTHER MOUTH (Freight). Originally awarded to the best book by a gay male author writing in English, the prize has been expanded to include the best form of written word by an LGBT* person, including those in translation. Mackintosh beat off competition from fellow Blake Friedmann authors Kerry Hudson (THIRST) and Laurie Penny (UNSPEAKABLE THINGS), as well as Niven Govinden (ALL THE DAYS AND NIGHTS), Kirsty Logan (THE RENTAL HEART AND OTHER FAIRYTALES) and Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt (INVISIBLE LOVE).

ANY OTHER MOUTH is a viciously funny, gut-wrenching and shockingly frank account of sexual misadventure, familial disintegration, loss, hope and self-discovery. Part short story collection, part fictionalised memoir.  A highly personal work, Anneliese takes the most intense episodes of her life so far, and reimagines them into profound, playful and poignant tales.

Chair of the judges, journalist Kaite Walsh, said of ANY OTHER MOUTH:  “Choosing a winner out of such an excellent shortlist should have been difficult, but we were all unanimous in ANY OTHER MOUTH, a raw, uncompromising debut by Anneliese Mackintosh that defies categorization. It isn’t quite a short story collection or a novel and, as she tells us at the very beginning, it’s only almost a memoir. In the end, the only category ANY OTHER MOUTH fits neatly into is the one of very, very good books. It stood out on a first reading for everyone, and we found that every conversation we had kept circling back to it. Grief, sex, family, growing up – there’s no theme here that isn’t universal, but in Anneliese’s hands they seem painfully personal. Rarely does a memoir or a short story collection bring you into the mind of the author quite so intimately. We were all struck by how skillfully Anneliese drew the fragments of her story together – it’s a masterclass in storytelling through non-linear narrative.”

Simon Heafield, Marketing Manager for the prize’s partner Foyles, said: “We’re thrilled that Anneliese Mackintosh has won, out of such a strong and diverse shortlist. This is a book that straddles the genres of fiction, memoir and short stories with great aplomb, and its winning the prize provides us with a great chance to put the book into the hands of more customers and help give such a talented writer the readership she clearly deserves.”

Visit Anneliese Mackintosh’s website, or follow her on Twitter.  

Praise for ANY OTHER MOUTH:

‘A fantastic, cleanly focused book that's hilarious and heartbreaking...’ – Guardian

‘Fresh and original… Mackintosh is a real talent and Any Other Mouth is a remarkable debut.’ – The Independent

‘The voice of the next generation… heart-wrenching, cheeky, profound and at the same time utterly stylish’ – Ewan Morrison, author of Close Your Eyes

Three Blake Friedmann authors named in Green Carnation Prize Shortlist

Three of Juliet Pickering’s authors have been named in the Shortlist for the fourth annual Green Carnation Prize. Kerry Hudson (THIRST, Chatto & Windus), Anneliese Mackintosh (ANY OTHER MOUTH, Freight) and Laurie Penny (UNSPEAKABLE THINGS, Bloomsbury) have been nominated for the prize which is awarded to LGBT writers for any form of the written word. This year was the first time the award was open to works in translation. The winner will be announced at an event at Foyles, Charing Cross Road on 28 November.

THIRST by Kerry Hudson follows Alena and Dave who meet during a London heatwave to begin a love affair as dark, joyful and frenetic as the city itself. Dave is drawn to Alena's passion for life, while Alena discovers that sex can be more than a transaction and that love and safety are priceless commodities. But a relationship founded on secrets is easily shattered, and when Alena's ex-lover arrives, threatening to expose her, Alena flees. By the time Dave overcomes his mistrust about Alena and follows her into the bitter Russian winter, he can only hope he's not too late to convince her that just as spring will come, second and even third chances can always be found.

Anneliese Mackintosh’s ANY OTHER MOUTH is a viciously funny, gut-wrenching and shockingly frank account of sexual misadventure, familial disintegration, loss, hope and self-discovery. Part short story collection, part fictionalised memoir,  ANY OTHER MOUTH is a highly personal work in which Anneliese takes the most intense episodes of her life so far, and reimagines them into profound, playful and poignant tales.

UNSPEAKABLE THINGS by Laurie Penny speaks for a new feminism that takes no prisoners, a feminism that is about justice and equality, but also about freedom for all. It talks about the freedom to be who we are, to love who we choose, to invent new gender roles, and to speak out fiercely against those who would deny us those rights. It is a book that gives the silenced a voice ­– a voice that speaks of unspeakable things.

Praise for the books:

“[THIRST] explores the lives of people not generally considered fit for literature and does so with wit and a shrewdness that makes Hudson's subjects zing from the page.” – The Guardian

‘One of the saddest yet most uplifting things I’ve read in ages… Mackintosh is a real talent and ANY OTHER MOUTH is a remarkable debut.’ – The Independent

‘Insightful, provocative and bold… UNSPEAKABLE THINGS [is] essential for anybody who truly believes in equality and freedom.’ – Irvine Welsh

Two Blake Friedmann authors nominated for Green Carnation Prize

Two Blake Friedmann authors have been longlisted for the Green Carnation Prize. Kerry Hudson’s THIRST and Laurie Penny’s UNSPEAKABLE THINGS were both among the 13 books selected for the prize which celebrates the best of LGBT literature. Other longlisted nominees include Neel Mukherjee, Anna Freeman and Emily Mackie. The shortlist will be announced on 6 November.

THIRST is a heart-breaking romance of almost unbearable fragility in contemporary East London & Russia. Kerry Hudson is also author of TONY HOGAN BOUGHT ME AN ICE CREAM FLOAT BEFORE HE STOLE MY MA, which was shortlisted for 8 awards, including the Green Carnation, and won the Scottish First Book Award. Both books were published by Chatto.

Laurie Penny’s UNSPEAKABLE THINGS is a fresh look at gender and power in the twenty-first century which asks difficult questions about dissent and desire, money and masculinity, sexual violence, menial work, mental health, queer politics and the Internet. It was published by Bloomsbury earlier this year.

Praise for THIRST:

'Hudson excels at depicting twilight lives... tremendously affecting… impressively unostentatious in its instinct for a common story within a city of millions that rarely gets heard.' - Claire Allfree, The Metro

'Hudson builds up narrative tension slowly. It’s not so much the will-they-won’t-they tension that is more pervasive to general romance, but rather a sense, even before we know Alena’s back-story fully, of external threat lingering in the air, knocking on the door of Dave’s flat, now a refuge... THIRST is hardly an easy summer read but it is probably an essential one.' - The Scotsman

Praise for UNSPEAKABLE THINGS:

‘We need her. … We need fresh, extreme voices to make us re-examine ourselves for complacency and closed-mindedness. Penny forces us to test the ground we stand on and say, yes.’ – Melanie Reid, The Times

‘[Laurie Penny] knits rendingly painful personal anecdotes into the essays in "Unspeakable Things: Sex, Lies and Revolution," … [she] is resolutely urgent (and sometimes very earnest) as she reaches for context, reminding us of the excluded and the undervalued.’ – Joy Press, The LA Times