ASHAM AWARD WINNER ANNOUNCED

Jo Lloyd, a software company project manager from Oxford is the winner of the 2009 Asham Award for Women. 

Her gentle evocative story Because it is Running By won the £1,000 top prize announced on September 26 by chair of judges Di Speirs, executive producer for BBC Radio 4. The prize giving was held at Charleston, East Sussex, during the annual short story festival Small Wonder.

The judges, who included David Constantine and Erica Wagner, were unanimous in their praise for Jo Lloyd's story. Among the tributes paid was one from novelist and short story writer Alison MacLeod.

“This was one of the best stories I have read this year,” Alison commented. “Subtle, understated and poignant……a balance of eagle-eyed realism and really fresh lyricism …… with perfectly pitched rhythm of prose.”

Jo Lloyd was brought up in Wales and now lives in Oxford. Her stories have been long listed for the Bridport Prize and she has won this year’s Willesden Herald Short Story Prize for her story Work.

Jo received her cheque from Cate Olson and Nash Robbins, of Much Ado Books, Alfriston, East Sussex. They sponsored nearly £2,000 in prize money for the Award.

Click here to read the winning story

Second prize of  £500 went  to Hilary Plews for Lily’s Army and £300 to Cherise Saywell from Edinburgh, who came third with her story The Candle Garden.

Hilary, a previous Asham finalist, has worked as a community lawyer with refugees and in carers’ development. Her story sees the breakdown of a marriage through a child's eyes.

Cherise won the V.S.Pritchett Prize in 2003 and her short stories have been published in The London Magazine, New Writing Scotland and Carve Magazine. The Candle Garden is set in a world where there are no open spaces left for a mother to scatter the ashes of her dead child.

Nine runners-up all received cash prizes from the Asham Trust, and were congratulated on the quality and originality of their writing by the three judges.

The runners-up were Alexandra Fox, Nora Morrison, Janna Connerton, Erica Rocca, Vicky Grut, Alison Dunn, Juno McKittrick, Liz Day and Catherine Chanter.

Click here for more about the runners up

All twelve stories are published in the anthology - Waving at the Gardener - which was launched after the prize giving with a special Small Wonder festival event, involving the judges and two of the commissioned writers. Alison MacLeod and Esther Freud read from their stories and David Constantine read from his new collection. Erica Wagner, literary editor of The Times, also read from contributor Margaret Atwood’s story Rape Fantasies.

Waving at the Gardener is the last of four books to be published by Bloomsbury and in a foreword to the anthology, co-founder of Bloomsbury, Liz Calder, said the Asham collection was vital in the encouragement it gives to prospective writers. Equally crucial was Asham’s contribution to the survival of rthe short story.

“The high standards of past and present collections are clear evidence of a hugely fertile generation of new writers,” she said. “Bloomsbury is very proud to have been associated with the publication of these sparkling anthologies and to have witnessed so many promising debuts.”


In 2011 the Asham Award starts a new collaboration when the anthology of winning and commissioned stories will be published by Virago.

The next Award will be launched in June 2010. 

Asham winner Jo Lloyd and Asham writer Carys Davies have both been nominated for the Pretend Genius Pushcart Prize.

BOOKER PRIZE FOUNDATION SPONSORS NEXT ASHAM AWARD

The foundation behind one of the world’s leading literary prizes is to sponsor next year’s Asham Award for new women writers.

The Booker Prize was started in 1968 and is awarded annually to the author of the best novel written in English by a Commonwealth or Irish citizen.

After the award of the 2001 prize, Booker plc was unable to continue its support, but many involved with the prize were determined to see it continue and a charity was established in 2002 - The Booker Prize Foundation - which undertakes the organisation, judging and award of the prize each year. Since 2002 the Man Group plc has sponsored the prize.

The Foundation’s charitable purpose is to promote the art of literature for the public benefit and the Asham Award is one of the projects which the Foundation has chosen to support.

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A NEW GUIDE TO WRITING SHORT STORIES

Short Circuit  comprises a collection of 24 specially commissioned essays from prizewinning writers, who have faced - and won - some of the most challenging competitions in the English language -including the National Short Story Award (Clare Wigfall); the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award (Tobias Hill, a former Asham judge); The Commonwealth Award; Writer of the Year ; the Willesden Herald Prize; The Fish and Bridport prizes.

Also among the contributors is last year’s winner of the Asham Award, Marian Garvey from Brighton.

Contributing editor to Short Circuit is East Sussex writer and teacher Vanessa Gebbie. Vanessa's own debut collection of award-winning stories - Words from a Glass Bubble - was published by Salt last year. .

Words from a Glass Bubble is published by Salt, price £12.99

FIRST NOVEL FROM ASHAM AWARD WINNER JULIA WIDDOWS

Ami de Maison, the haunting tale of a lonely young man and his obsession for the family who live opposite, was one of the most memorable stories in the first Asham Award anthology, published by Serpent’s Tail in 1997.

The author of Ami de Maison was Julia Widdows and her first novelLiving in Perhaps was published by Doubleday earlier this year. The book is now out in paperback and is published by Black Swan at £7.99.
This remarkable novel has much the same dream-like enigmatic quality of Julia’s prizewinning story. And in a recent interview with Carole Buchan, of the Asham Trust, Julia explained that she actually began writing the novel at about the same time. Both stories feature outsiders, who try to live their lives through others, always on the outside looking in.

Julia lives in Brighton and teaches creative writing - often in unusual settings, for she has run groups for recovering addicts and alcoholics, many of whom live most of their lives as outsiders. She also works with very young disabled children.

The book was published after Julia was shortlisted for the Daily Mail First Novel Award in 2007. Apart from the winner, she was the only one of the six shortlisted writers to have her book published.

Living in Perhaps is the story of Carol , a girl from a narrow, tightly controlled home who enters into an alternative existence when she crawls through a gap in the garden hedge and meets the exuberant, arty family next door. But nothing is quite as it seems and Carol creates not only a fantasy about her own life, but about the Hennessys the other side of the hedge. It's a dangerous scenario for, as the book cover warns, "..........be careful what you wish for."

The book is written entirely from Carol's viewpoint, so we see the glamorous Hennessy family with her eyes, and it is only gradually, as the layers are peeled away, do we see the trap into which she has walked.

The structure of this compelling story is interesting, switching as it does from Carol's childhood and teens to adult life where she tells her story from the psychiatric unit to which she has been sent by the Court. Again we hear her side of the story and again we are left wondering. How much was fact? How much fiction?

The strength of this beautifully written novel is in its ambiguity. I was reminded of Michael Frayn's novel Spies which also sees the world from a child's viewpoint and where innocence and fantasy lead to tragedy.

Living in Perhaps is set in the Sixties, where there were fewer distractions for a child and where a lonely outsider like Carol is thrown back into the inner world of books and her own daydreams. There is a strong sense of period and of suburbia epitomised by Carol's parents in their neat bungalow with the carefully clipped garden hedge and where the colourful, noisy Hennessys come to represent escape.

Julia admits that the book can be interpreted in many different ways. There is no attempt to bring all the threads together for a neat ending. Having spent much of her working life supporting families in difficult situations, she knows only too well that neat endings are a fantasy.

 '...(a) smart, sad and funny debut.' Daily Mail

'An enthralling collection of characters who quickly draw you right into their sinister world. An absolute gem, I couldn't put it down.' Kate Long, author of The Bad Mother's Handbook

Living in Perhaps is published in paperback by Black Swan for £7.99. 

ANOTHER FIRST FOR AN ASHAM FINALIST

Emma Henderson, who was a finalist in the 2007 Asham Award with her story A l'Ombre, which appeared in in the anthology Is This What You Want?, has just published her first novel.

Grace Williams Says It Loud is no ordinary love story. But then Grace isn't an ordinary girl.
Disgusting,” said the nurse.
And when no more could be done, they put her away, aged eleven.  On her first day at the Briar Mental Institute, Grace meets Daniel. He sees a different Grace: someone to share secrets and canoodle with, someone to fight for. Debonair Daniel, who can type with his feet, fills Grace’s head with tales from Paris and the world beyond.

After several years running a ski-chalet in France, Emma now lives in London. Her story which appeared in the last Asham anthology caught the eye of one of London's biggest literary agents - and she was encouraged to write her first novel.

Grace Williams Says It Loud will be published by Sceptre next June.