Natasha Carthew and Karen Powell shortlisted for the inaugural Nero Book Awards

We’re delighted to share the news that two Blake Friedmann books – UNDERCURRENT by Natasha Carthew and FIFTEEN WILD DECEMBERS by Karen Powell – have been shortlisted for the 2023 Nero Book Awards.

UNDERCURRENT has been shortlisted for the non-fiction award while FIFTEEN WILD DECEMBERS made the fiction shortlist. You can read about the other shortlisted titles here.

UNDERCURRENT was published in hardback by Coronet in April 2023, receiving excellent reviews and endorsements, including ‘this important and beautifully lyrical book asks questions about identity, belonging and the ability of words to transform a life’ from The Times. Part-memoir, part-investigation, part love-letter to Cornwall, UNDERCURRENT follows Natasha as she returns to the cliffs of her childhood, determined to make sense of an upbringing shaped by political neglect and a life defined by the beauty of nature. It is a journey through place, and a vivid story of hope, beauty and fierce resilience, and will be published in paperback in Spring 2024.

A Times Best Historical Fiction Books of 2023 pick, FIFTEEN WILD DECEMBERS was published by Europa Editions in October 2023. It is a creative retelling of the life of one of Britain’s most talented writers — Emily Bronte – and deftly explores imagination, liberty, sisterhood, and the power of nature in dazzling, evocative prose. Karen is currently working on her next novel.

The Nero Book Awards were launched in May 2023 and are underwritten and delivered by Caffè Nero in partnership with Right To Dream, The Booksellers Association and Brunel University London. The Awards ‘celebrate the craft of great writing and the joy of reading, while also pointing readers of all ages and interests in the direction of outstanding books.’ They recognise the ‘best writing and reads’ in the following categories: Children’s Fiction, Debut Fiction, Fiction and Non-Fiction.

Amanda Johnson, awards director, commented: ‘The announcement of our shortlist is such an exciting milestone for the Nero Book Awards. We have here an incredible range of books that will speak to a variety of different audiences, from books based on true stories to fantasies to explorations of self, place and landscape. Huge congratulations to all the shortlisted authors and their publishers. We hope that everyone will find a new favourite book on this list.’

The category winners will be announced on 16th January 2024 and those books will go forward for consideration for the 2023 Nero Gold Prize, to be announced at a ceremony in London in late February 2024.

About Natasha Carthew

Natasha Carthew is a working-class writer from Cornwall. She has written all her nine books outside, either in the fields and woodland that surround her home or in the cabin that she built from scrap wood. She is the Founder and Artistic Director of The Working Class Writers’ Festival and The Nature Writing Prize for Working Class Writers. Natasha is known for writing on socioeconomic issues and working-class representation in literature for several publications, podcasts and programmes; including ITV, BBC Radio 4, The Bookseller, Guardian, and The Economist. She is a recipient of The Bookseller Rising Star Award 2022.

Praise for UNDERCURRENT

‘A powerful story of social inequality told with the depth of voice that only comes from a writer passionately rooted in place. Like the Cornish tides that fill her life, Carthew is at times roaring, visceral and exclusive, in turn gentle, embracing and inclusive, but always driven by hope and determination.’ – Raynor Winn

‘Haunting and powerful, a book about the sea and the power of belonging, about secrets and words, this is a beautiful and powerful memoir. I read it in one sitting.’ – Kate Mosse

‘Carthew shows us Cornwall as it often lived but rarely seen, where the rich holiday and others struggle to survive. It's a tale of two counties with the ever-changing sea as a constant. It is a story of queer resistance, of community and of finding your own voice. Written with the personal campaign passion of Kerry Hudson’s LOWBORN.’ – Damian Barr

‘By turns marvellous, moving, & mesmerising’ – Anita Sethi

‘UNDERCURRENT deals with difficult issues, including violence, self-harm, Carthew’s unhappiness as a gay teenager and abuse of alcohol and drugs. There is righteous anger about the damage done to Cornish people by unemployment, social deprivation and lack of housing: “The heart of our communities is being ripped out”. But this is also a story of humour, resilience and doing things with Kernewek pride, and Carthew's decision in the closing pages to walk away from her self-destructive teenage life and the Cornish landscape she loved is moving.’ – Ann Kennedy Smith, Times Literary Supplement

About Karen Powell

Karen grew up in Rochester, Kent. She left school at sixteen but returned to education in her mid-twenties, reading English Literature at Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge. Karen lives with her family in York and works at York Minster Fund, a charity which raises money for the conservation and restoration of York Minster.

Her debut novel, THE RIVER WITHIN, was published by Europa in the USA and UK (2020) and Edizioni E/O in Italy, and was described as ‘utterly stunning’, ‘mesmerizing’ and hailed as ‘a masterpiece.’

Praise for FIFTEEN WILD DECEMBERS

‘How this isolated, grief-drenched existence gave rise to the passionate artistic sensibility of Emily’s poetry and fiction is powerfully envisioned in Karen Powell’s second novel, FIFTEEN WILD DECEMBERS. Powell’s debut novel, 2020’s THE RIVER WITHIN, was set in the 1950s in North Yorkshire, where Powell herself lives, and evinced the same fine eye for landscape that suffuses this novel… the worlds shared with her sisters and brother are beautifully drawn… Powell is faithful to the known facts about the Brontë family without letting this material oppress the fictional narrative… the description of the final weeks of Emily’s life is almost unbearably moving… for all this, the book’s lasting impression is not of melancholy, but unquenchable vitality… With FIFTEEN WILD DECEMBERS, Powell has served her heroine loyally.’ – Rebecca Abrams, The Financial Times

 ‘The story of moorland isolation, early deaths and burgeoning creativity is a familiar one, but Powell with Emily as her first-person narrator, gives it a new energy, capturing the vulnerability of the three sisters and their determination to make the most of their talents.’ – Nick Rennison, The Times, ‘The best historical fiction books of 2023’

 ‘I was spellbound by this fictionalised portrait of Emily Brontë, brimming with the texture of the dank, wild hills of Yorkshire, the weight and power of grief, and the contentment to be found in daring to forge one’s own path in the world. To read Karen Powell is to be constantly delighted and intrigued; each sentence is so sharp, so shining.’ – Elizabeth Macneal

‘Beautiful.’ – Victoria Hislop

‘Brilliant and imaginative… Its language is muscular and precise, its sympathy passionate, true and, in the end, overwhelming.’ – Anthony Quinn, author of CURTAIN CALL

 

Follow Natasha on X (previously Twitter) and Instagram

Follow Karen on X (previously Twitter) and Instagram

Hodder Studio wins auction for UNDERCURRENT: A CORNISH MEMOIR OF POVERTY, NATURE AND RESILIENCE, a vital, thoughtful and powerful memoir by Natasha Carthew

Editorial Director Harriet Poland has bought UK and British Commonwealth Rights after a multi-publisher auction, from Juliet Pickering at Blake Friedmann Literary Agency. The book will be published in Summer 2023.

UNDERCURRENT is a memoir of rural poverty and escape that blends nature-writing with personal testimony and investigation. Cornwall has long been the heartland of the second home, a county of staggering beauty and striking inequality, where working-class families are pushed out of the villages of their childhood and ignored by a political system not built to protect them. Natasha Carthew grew up in a Cornish village that felt a world away from the Rick Stein seafronts, experiencing a childhood of perilous instability and limited opportunity while drinking in the beauty of the world around her. She found solace in the local mobile library, and freedom in the written word. In UNDERCURRENT she comes full circle, returning to the place of her birth to make sense of her journey away from it.

 This memoir will explore the complex ecosystem of rural poverty, including precarious employment opportunities, limited education and healthcare resources, and the ravages poverty plays upon the human mind and body. It is also a love letter to a landscape that is among the most beautiful in the world, an Eden of natural magnificence and a refuge for the spirit. Natasha’s writing has always connected the beauty of the world with its harshest lessons, and in her first non-fiction book she reveals a powerful truth about society.

 Natasha Carthew is the author of three YA novels (Bloomsbury), an adult novel, ALL RIVERS RUN FREE (Riverrun), several books of poetry, and a contributor to HAG: FORGOTTEN FOLKTALES RETOLD (Virago), and to WOMEN ON NATURE (Unbound). She is a regular public voice on working class stories, has written for several national newspapers and recorded essays for BBC Radio broadcast.   She is also the Founder and Artistic Director of The Working Class Writers’ Festival.

 Natasha Carthew says: ‘It was incredibly important to me that UNDERCURRENT my love letter to Cornwall, was placed into the hands of a creative, compassionate editor, an editor who, whilst treating my memoir with care and consideration, would not be afraid to challenge the picture-postcard image of a County that in truth is ravaged by severe poverty; I’m delighted to say that Harriet Poland is without doubt that editor. With Hodder Studio I know that I have found my true literary home, a publisher of innovation and verve, I can think of no better place to publish this, my heartland story.’

 Harriet Poland comments: ‘Of many society-shifting events of the two years, the great migration to ‘the country’ is perhaps the one that will leave the longest mark. What is a privilege to some is the slow destruction of a way of life to others, and this book is a testament to the impact of rural inequality. Natasha, as ever, balances beauty, intimacy and truth in her writing, and this memoir is a vitally important and moving record of lives beyond the M25.’

You can pre-order the book at Waterstones here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/undercurrent/natasha-carthew/9781399706476

Follow Natasha on Twitter and visit her website.