“I hoped to find something wonderful on the shortlist, but I never expected to read a novel so profoundly moving and exquisitely written as this debut.”
2016 judge, literary agent Susan Armstrong of Conville & Walsh.
Judge’s comments: “This was an incredible shortlist – so much talent, which made it as hard as it was joyful as the judge to read and pick a winner. I hoped to find something wonderful on the shortlist, but I never expected to read a novel so profoundly moving and exquisitely written as this debut. It’s one of those very rare gems where you’re immediately enthralled by the story and the characters, where the page turns itself. Not many writers can make me feel like this and that sense of emotional investment and connection rang true from the first page to the last.”
Bath Novel Award 2016 Winner: KIM SHERWOOD for TESTAMENT
(Unpublished Literary Historical)
Prize: £2,000
“I began writing TESTAMENT in 2012 after visiting a friend in Berlin. Standing in the architectural voids of the Jewish Museum, I was struck by an idea: could the voids be used structurally in a novel to place the present and past in conversation, tunnelling through time? When I got home, my main characters, Silk and Eva, seemed to be waiting.”
“The first stages of writing helped me navigate the recent death of my grandfather, and attempt to understand the stories my grandmother – who is a Holocaust Survivor – told me about her experiences as a child in fascist Hungary. As the novel developed, right-wing extremism returned across Europe, influencing the direction of my writing. Over the next four years, my research took me back to Berlin, to Serbia, the Lake District, and Hungary. TESTAMENT took shape between the archive and the streets of Europe today, between Lake Windermere, the Thames, and the banks of the Danube.”
KIM SHERWOOD grew up in Camden, next to Hampstead Heath and currently lives in Bath. She pursued her MA in creative writing at the University of East Anglia 2011-2012, and then moved onto the Ph.D in critical and creative writing at UEA with a full studentship. She is interested in how fiction can engage with history, place genres in dialogue with one another, explore language, and participate in political discourse. During her Ph.D, Kim taught literature and creative writing at UEA for two years, and worked as an archivist for the British Archive for Contemporary Writing. She now teaches on the critical and creative writing MA at the University of Sussex.
JUDGE’S COMMENTS: Testament is an absolutely stunning debut. I feel a better person from having read it and incredibly lucky to have shared in Silk and Eva’s world. Testament opens with the death of Joseph Silk, a renowned artist and holocaust survivor, and most beloved grandfather to Eva. Reeling from her loss, Eva begins to uncover the life her grandfather lived before she was born, and in doing so uncovers old secrets that may explain her own muddled life. Shifting between Eva’s present and Silk’s past as a teenager struggling through WW2, this is a novel about limitless love, unshakeable regret and to what extent we have control over the sort of person we become.” – Susan Armstrong of Conville & Walsh Literary Agency
READ the opening pages of TESTAMENT by Kim Sherwood
INTERVIEW: Kim Sherwood on winning and signing with Susan Armstrong
Bath Novel Award 2016 Runner up: LAURA MARSHALL for FRIEND REQUEST
(Unpublished Women’s Psychological Thriller)
Prize: £400 Cornerstones Literary Consultancy vouchers
In 2015, freelance conference producer Laura Marshall decided it was time to fulfil a lifetime’s ambition to write a novel, and enrolled on the Curtis Brown Creative three month novel writing course. When the course began in November 2015, she had written just two chapters of the novel that would become Friend Request, a psychological thriller about a woman who receives a Facebook friend request from a school friend who died twenty-five years ago. By April 2016, Laura had completed a first draft and reached the shortlist for the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize 2016. Laura lives in Kent with her husband and two children and is newly represented by Felicity Blunt, literary agent at Curtis Brown.
Judge Susan Armstrong of Conville & Walsh said: “Friend Request gave me goosebumps from the first page, when forty-year-old Louise receives a friend request on Facebook from Maria, a girl she bullied at school and who died twenty-five years ago. When she starts receiving threatening messages that imply Louise was responsible for Maria’s death – something Louise has secretly believed to be true for years – and that she’s going to pay for what she did. Louise must confront her shadowy past. But it’s not her own past she should be so afraid of. This fast-paced, compulsive debut has huge potential and I loved it.”
READ the opening pages of FRIEND REQUEST by Laura Marshall
Read Laura Marshall’s interview here
Bath Novel Award 2016 Shortlisted: SCOTT BAIN for THE GOD BULLET
(Unpublished YA Science Fiction Thriller)
Scott Bain was born in Newcastle upon Tyne and now lives in Warwickshire. After a stint at art college, he worked in London advertising agencies as an art director before realising it would be much more fun looking after his two sons at home. The God Bullet, his first full-length novel, is set in a future London. A teenage boy is hired to fire dangerous curses from his high-powered sniper rifle until a hit goes badly wrong making him enemy number one in the London underworld. Scott is now represented by literary agent Lauren Clarke at Bell Lomax Moreton.
Awards founder Caroline Ambrose commented: “The God Bullet is a pacy and action-packed story set in 2049 Outer London where the ancient art of cursing is flourishing. When thirteen-year-old Jay’s widowed father struggles to provide for them, Jay must become a hitman for a master curse-maker in a world where almost everyone is out for themselves. The worldbuilding is fresh and imaginative, and Scott’s voice is distinctive and compelling with terrific dialogue throughout.”
READ the opening pages of THE GOD BULLET by Scott Bain
INTERVIEW Scott Bain on accepting literary agent representation
Bath Novel Award 2016 Shortlisted: CATHY LAYNE for YOU’RE BEAUTIFUL
(Unpublished High-end Commercial)
While working as an editor in Tokyo, Liverpool-born Cathy Layne met a literary agent who mentored her through two early novels. The second of these was longlisted in the Mslexia Novel Competition in 2015 and garnered some interest from UK publishing houses but ultimately did not find a home. Cathy continued to write at her weekend cottage in a seaside village outside Tokyo. Every Friday evening, she took a packed commuter train from the city to the end of the line, a journey which sowed the seeds for her third novel, You’re Beautiful, in which an English girl in Japan becomes the victim of a deluded stalker. Cathy is currently living in Bangkok where she teaches English to small children. Cathy is now represented by Zoe Ross at United Agents.
Awards founder Caroline Ambrose commented: “You’re Beautiful is a strong and suspense-filled character-driven thriller with a distinctive cast and unforgettable anti-hero lead in John Tanaka. Born to Japanese parents but raised by his mother in Liverpool, Tanaka finds work as an English teacher in Tokyo while searching for the father who walked out before he was born. A highly accomplished manuscript which attracted high votes at every stage of the contest.”
INTERVIEW: Cathy Layne on accepting representation with Zoe Ross at United Agents
READ the opening pages of YOU’RE BEAUTIFUL by Cathy Layne
Read Cathy Layne on writing YOU’RE BEAUTIFUL
Read The Bath Novel Award 2016 Shortlist Announcement in full here
Bath Novel Award 2016 Longlisted
| Annetta Berry | The Binding Frame |
| Leona Ashton | Looking for Heaven |
| Erika Banerji | Morning Song |
| Anna Baness | North Rook |
| Damyanti Biswas | You Beneath Your Skin |
| Nadine Bjursten | By These Limbs |
| Brendan Boehning | In Love with the Furies |
| Lorraine Brown | The Paris Train |
| Richard Buxton | Whirligig |
| Sharon Cook | Hope |
| Philip Connor Finn | Permanence |
| Shymala Dason | Monsoon Coming |
| Carolyn Gillum | Alt |
| Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott | Swan Song |
| Marianne Holmes | Your Sleeping Head |
| Theresa Howes | The Debut |
| Nicola Keller | Half a Girl |
| Gaby Koppel | Reparation |
| Jennifer Laird | House of Smouldering Tears |
| Elisa Lodato | An Unremarkable Body |
| Katy Mahood | Entanglement |
| Rachel Malcolm | One Act of Defiance |
| Brogan McEllan | Thirteen, Backwards |
| Laura McKenna | Field Of Blackbirds |
| Lesley McLaren | An Easy Deceit |
| Saima Mir | The Khan |
| Kali Napier | Songs of all Poets |
| Kali Napier | An Emu War |
| Laurie Petrou | Sister of Mine |
| CL Raven | The Devil’s Servants |
| Marisa Roemer | The Resurrectionists |
| Andy Rumbold | The Last Fiesta |
| Joanne Sefton | The Half Life of Barbara Kipling |
| John Taylor | A Policy on Kissing |
| Stephanie Vanderslice | Beautiful, Terrible Things |