Photos by www.emmaseal.com
“Reading these novels has been a JOY”
2017 judge, literary agent Laura Williams of Peters Fraser & Dunlop
Bath Novel Award 2017 Winner:
SOPHIE DRAPER for CUCKOO
(Unpublished PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER)
Prize: £2,000
“I’m very excited by Cuckoo’s commercial potential, and I loved the creepy concept and the gothic undertones.” Laura Williams, literary agent and 2017 judge.
“Cuckoo is a gripping read. Loved the fairytale elements and touches of the gothic.” Joanna Barnard, author of Precocious and Hush Little Baby.
Sophie Draper is a traditional oral storyteller. After a first career in accountancy, motherhood rekindled her love of stories and storytelling. She found her head blossoming with characters and ideas and began travelling the country, entertaining all ages with folk tales and songs. Sophie lives with her family in a rural Derbyshire house filled with music, books, cats and steaming wet sports kit dumped on the kitchen floor.
Always fascinated by fairy tales, the spark for Cuckoo came to Sophie after moving to the country and waking to find her hillside farm house marooned in a white sea of autumn mist. Sophie imagined a woman travelling back to her childhood home, only to find it filled with fairy tale horrors and elusive memories. Sophie put the unpacking of her removal boxes on hold, cleared a writing desk and finished Cuckoo just in time for the Bath Novel Award 2017 deadline.
Read: INTERVIEW Bath Novel Award 2017 Winner Sophie Draper
Read the opening pages of all five shortlisted novels here
Visit Sophie Draper’s website
Bath Novel Award 2017 Shortlisted:
BEN ORLANDO for LOST JOURNALS of SUNDOWN
(Unpublished LITERARY PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER)
Also awarded the Cornerstones Literary Consultancy Prize (£500)
“I got totally swept up in reading this. The author is clearly both talented and ambitious.” Laura Williams, literary agent and 2017 judge.
Ben Orlando lives in Arlington, Virginia with his wife and cat. For more than ten years he’s been hacking away at short stories, screen plays, and novels. Ben is also an English professor at George Mason University and produces a podcast called History Repeating Itself, which covers the repetition of past events in today’s world.
While researching hunter gatherer societies for an episode of the podcast, Ben stumbled across a link between choice paralysis and sickness which sparked the idea for his novel. In Lost Journals of Sundown, an obsessed scientist tries to prove the consequences of choice, while a suicidal writer turned detective struggles to stop him.
Read the opening pages of all five shortlisted novels here
Listen to Ben’s History Repeating Itself podcasts here
Bath Novel Award 2017 Shortlisted:
IAIN ROWAN for ONE of US
(Indie published, CRIME)
“A well-executed and moving story with a compelling protagonist.” Laura Williams, literary agent and 2017 judge.
Iain Rowan was born in Kent but has lived in Sunderland for the past 26 years. When he’s not working in higher education he’s a novelist, short story writer, and occasional poet. Iain is creative director for the Sunderland Festival of Creative Writing and works with local writers in Holmeside Writers, a group he founded in 2014. He’s been shortlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger and for the Northern Writers’ Award.
One of Us comes from Iain’s interest in writing crime fiction about people who live on the margins of society: not the police, not the real criminals, but people caught in between the two, and the moral and practical compromises that they have to make to survive in a world which, when it’s not forgetting them, is against them.
Read the opening pages of all five shortlisted novels here
Visit Iain’s website at www.iainrowan.com
One of Us is available as an indie published ebook and paperbook here
Bath Novel Award 2017 Shortlisted:
NICHOLAS HERRMANN for The LIGHT FACTORY
(Unpublished SPECULATIVE LITERARY)
“Hugely stylish, and very accomplished. I have no doubt it’ll do very well.” Laura Williams, literary agent and 2017 judge.
Nicholas Herrmann graduated from the MA in Creative Writing at Bath Spa in 2016 with distinction, signing with the literary agency A.M. Heath in early 2017. He wrote and submitted The Light Factory as his final manuscript for the course, and was shortlisted for Bath Spa’s Janklow & Nesbit Prize.
Nicholas’ writing explores existential, speculative and ecological themes, rooted in everyday, human relationships. He wrote The Light Factory as an attempt to understand and reconcile issues common to his generation: depression, extinction, lost opportunities and the importance of art.
Read the opening pages of all five shortlisted novels here
Bath Novel Award 2017 Shortlisted:
PENELOPE DAVIDMANN for The LOST SISTER
(Unpublished, YOUNG ADULT)
“A great pitch with lots of potential, and I loved the twists and turns.” Laura Williams, literary agent and 2017 judge.
Penelope Davidmann studied History at University and went to work in social housing, writing poems and short stories in her spare time. After having children, she worked in a local independent bookshop for ten years and began writing stories for children. After an inspirational Arvon course, Penelope took the MA in Writing for Young People at Bath Spa University. She wrote and submitted The Lost Sister as her
final manuscript for the course.
In The Lost Sister a sixteen year old girl searches for the older sister who ran away from their religious sect. The rule they live by means forgetting she ever had a sister, but that is impossible. The Lost Sister is about family, friendship and leadership; when to follow and who to trust.
Read the opening pages of all five shortlisted novels here
Bath Novel Award 2017 Longlist
| Hazel Barkworth | Honeysuckle |
| Annetta Berry | The Binding Frame |
| Lorraine Cannell | Hollow |
| Steven Coombs | Lucas |
| Shymala Dason | Over the Coconut Trees |
| Penelope Davidmann | The Lost Sister |
| Sophie Draper | Cuckoo |
| Rachel Dunlop | Start Wearing Purple for Me Now |
| Martin Gilbert | Enemies at the Gate |
| Carolyn Gillum | Alt |
| Jennifer Harvey | Complicity |
| Nasser Hashmi | In a Rushdie Winter |
| Nick Herrman | The Light Factory |
| Suzanne Hickey | The Silence of Shannon |
| Pam Isfeld | Brave Girls |
| Sarah Ann Juckes | Proof of the Outside |
| Jo Lenaghan | Forget Me Not |
| Sarah Linley | The Pact |
| Claire Lyman | After the Lunch |
| Louise Mangos | Strangers on a Bridge |
| Lily Meyer | Translations |
| Ben Orlando | Lost Journals of Sundown |
| Ben Orlando | Iraqnia |
| Iain Rowan | One of Us |
| Vanessa Savage | The History of You |
| Deirdre Shanahan | Mountainous Regions of the Heart |
| Christopher Shevlin | Jonathon Fairfax Must Be Destroyed |
| Cam Terwilliger | Yet Wilderness Grew in my Heart |
| Ali Thurm | Jacob’s Ladder |
| Csilla Toldy | Finding Freedom |
| Rebecca Trick-Walker | The Still Gate |
| Madeleine Woosnam | What Was Left Behind |
| Christopher Young | Service |
Read the Bath Novel Award 2017 shortlist announcement in full here
Read the Bath Novel Award 2017 longlist announcement in full here