The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Highlight of literary year for inspirational Dundee
Best week of the year for book lovers in and around Dundee
Think of the leading literary hotspots and metropolitan London or trendy Edinburgh spring to mind.
Yet Dundee can lay claim to having inspired more new writers than anywhere else in the UK. The city hosts the biggest book prize in the UK for unpublished novelists.
The Dundee International Book Prize includes a £5,000 cash award, publishing deal, and a week of protected writing time. Its backers are Dundee University, Freight Publishing and Dundee City Council.
Peggy Hughes is the head of Literary Dundee – the offshoot of Dundee University that organises Dundee Literary Festival and the Dundee International Book Prize. She spends most of the year sourcing and booking writers from all over the UK and beyond, arranging venues, cajoling people into being judges and readers, publicising the event and generally getting up to her oxters in Dundee’s artistic community.
“Festival programmers are like magpies,” she says. “You’re always on the lookout for something shiny, picking up things here and there.
“I spend a lot of time going to other book festivals...”
This year’s book prize judges were Shereen Nanjiani, Ian McMillan, Hannah McGill and publisher Adrian Searle.
There’s an all-female shortlist for this year’s prize. The Margins by Jessica Thummel, Shadow Jumping by Margaret Ries and London Clay by Amy Spencer are the final three in the running.
The winner will be announced at a dinner in the Apex Hotel tomorrow night and their novel will be published early in the new year.
Out of the 11 writers who have previously won the prize, Jacob Appel has arguably gone on to enjoy the greatest success.
The New Yorker won the 2012 prize for his debut novel The Man Who Wouldn’t Stand Up.
He said: “The Dundee Prize was one of the major turning points in my literary life. Up until that time, I’d written and published short fiction – literally over 200 stories – but nobody was willing to publish a full-length collection.
“On the heels of winning the prize, I’ve published another nine books over the past four years, with an additional five titles under contract. But it was the Dundee Prize that made all the difference. I cannot adequately express the joy I felt at holding the published book in my hands for the first time, or the look on my grandmother’s face when she realised I wasn’t frittering my life away.
“In short, I am extremely grateful to the people of Dundee for both their generosity and extremely good literary taste.”
Even just coming close to winning the Dundee International Book Prize can be enough to launch a literary career.
Neil Broadfoot was shortlisted for the award in 2013 for his crime novel Falling Fast. The 41-year old who lives in Dunfermline credits the exposure with securing a publishing deal.
“There’s no doubt being shortlisted launched my career as a writer,” the former Scotsman journalist said. “It got the attention of my publisher and I’ve just released the third book in the series.”