Location: Singapore
Impact statement: Shaking up Singaporean poetry with an uncompromising attitude and a no holds barred approach
Poet Marylyn Tan is breaking down all sorts of barriers in Singapore’s literary scene. The first woman to win the Singapore Literature Prize for English poetry in its 28 year history, she is known for her iconoclastic, witty, outspoken take on subjects including gender politics, and consistently shows a willingness to take on taboo subjects, many of them sexual and religious. A former stand-up comic, she is also the founder of arts collective Dis/Content.
Photo: Jessica Chou for Tatler Hong Kong
Location: Singapore
Impact statement: Shaking up Singaporean poetry with an uncompromising attitude and a no holds barred approach
Poet Marylyn Tan is breaking down all sorts of barriers in Singapore’s literary scene. The first woman to win the Singapore Literature Prize for English poetry in its 28 year history, she is known for her iconoclastic, witty, outspoken take on subjects including gender politics, and consistently shows a willingness to take on taboo subjects, many of them sexual and religious. A former stand-up comic, she is also the founder of arts collective Dis/Content.
Photo: Jessica Chou for Tatler Hong Kong
FOUR books from Australia are among the contenders for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, with the announcement coinciding with the 250th anniversary of the author’s birth. The longlist has 11 books in contention for the £25,000 and was revealed yesterday. Two of the Australian books are not yet published in the UK. Settings of the books on the list range from Tudor, Victorian and Edwardian England to Borneo, Tasmania, Indonesia, Japan, the US, Russia and East Africa. The 2021 prize was open to books published in the UK, Ireland and the Commonwealth during 2020. Those in the running include Hinton by Mark Blacklock, The Tolstoy Estate by Steven Conte, and The Mirror And The Light by Hilary Mantel. The judges said: “Historical fiction has not obeyed any lockdown. Instead, in this year’s new publishing, there has been an explosion of lively ideas and fresh ways of storytelling, with traditional notions of historical fiction stretched and tested.
The longlist has 11 books in contention for the £25,000 and was revealed on Tuesday.
This year’s longlist includes four books from Australia, two of which are not yet published in the UK.
Hinton, by Mark Blacklock (Granta)
The Tolstoy Estate, by Steven Conte (HarperCollins Australia)
The Year Without Summer, by Guinevere Glasfurd (Two Roads)
A Room Made Of Leaves, by Kate Grenville (Canongate UK, Text Publishing Australia)
Mr Beethoven, by Paul Griffiths (Henningham Family Press)
Afterlives, by Abdulrazak Gurnah (Bloomsbury)
A Treacherous Country, by K L Kruimink (Allen & Unwin Australia)
The Mirror And The Light, by Hilary Mantel (4th Estate)
Walter Scott Prize 2021 Longlist Announced
By
Exciting news! The longlist for the 2021 Walter Scott Prize has been announced.
If you’re a fan of historical fiction, these novels are some of the best around. Definitely worth adding to your “to read” pile!
The books in contention for the £25,000 prize are:
“Hinton” by Mark Blacklock
“Afterlives” by Abdulrazak Gurnah
About the prize
The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction is open to books published in the previous year in the UK, Ireland or the Commonwealth.
First awarded in 2010, the prize honours Sir Walter’s position as the “father” of the historical fiction genre.