Creative Writing Lecturer reaches prestigious long-list
Lisa BlowerLisa Blower, a Creative Writing Lecturer at Bangor University's School of English Literature is one of ten authors long-listed for the prestigious 2018 Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award.
This international Award promotes and celebrate the excellence of the modern short story and attracts entries from among the world’s finest writers. Its £30,000 prize is the most generous prize for a single short story in the English language.
Lisa Blower is no stranger to such competitions, having won The Guardian’s National Short Story competition in 2009. She was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award in 2013, and has been Highly Commended and shortlisted for the Bridport Prize for 3 consecutive years. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, Comma Press, The New Welsh Review, The Luminary, Short Story Sunday, and on Radio 4.
Lisa’s entry, Abdul is a response to the refugee crisis but from the point of view of someone who was indirectly involved with what happens next. It tells the story of a 16 year old Afghan asylum seeker and the journey he makes with a social worker from Kent to Stoke on Trent.
Lisa explains: “These are the stories that never get told but become the stories that affect our own sense of citizenship. The journey someone has experienced to get here is never the whole journey. The arrival and what happens next can be as gruelling, as cruel, as frightening as what’s already been experienced because now you are classified, judged, pigeonholed, alienated; in effect, you still have no voice and no place. And it’s about agendas: governmental, personal, people following orders.”
Lisa will be reading the story for the first time in public at Y Llechan, Bangor University School of English’s ‘Visiting Writer’ series, on 14th February 6.30pm Pontio PL2. This event will feature the launch of colleague and esteemed poet Professor Carol Rumens’ latest collection Beldezeki (Emma Press). This event is free and open to the public.
The Shortlist will be announced on Sunday 18 March, with the Award announced on Thursday, April 27.
Lisa Blower’s debut novel ‘Sitting Ducks’ (Fair Acre Press) was shortlisted for the inaugural Arnold Bennett Prize 2017, and longlisted for The Guardian Not the Booker 2016, The Rubery Award 2016 and The People’s Book Prize 2016. She was the first writer in residence at Shrewsbury Museum & Art Gallery where she completed ‘Green Blind’, her second novel, and has just delivered her debut short story collection ‘It’s Gone Dark over Bill’s Mother’s’ which draws heavily upon her childhood in Stoke on Trent. She is now working on her third novel, Pondweed, an entanglement of ponds, politics and pensioners.
Publication date: 11 February 2018