Bath Novel Award 2022 Winner | Prize: £3,000
FRANCESCA ROBBINS for VICTORIANA
Historical crime | unpublished
“Right from the get go, a sense of purpose and place and narrative impetus which means you can sit and just explore the narrative. A real sense of a writer, writing for a reader, rather than just to a reader.”
-Nelle Andrew, 2022 judge and literary agent at Rachel Mills Literary Agency
Francesca Robbins is a disabled writer who lives in a cottage by the sea in England with her dog, husband, and “enough books to bury them all alive”. She initially studied Law at Cambridge University, then returned after a long illness to study her first love, English Literature. She has worked as a copywriter, at a Sunday newspaper, and as an English tutor.
Since childhood Francesca has escaped into books to cope with chronic illness, and she is passionate about writing authentic disabled perspectives. Victoriana explores the isolation and prejudice experienced by characters who live with sickness and trauma, also drawing inspiration from gothic literature, Greek tragedy, English folklore, and pacy murder-mysteries. As a work in progress, Victoriana also longlisted for The Bath Novel Award 2020, The Curtis Brown First Novel Prize 2020 and won a 2020 Madeleine Milburn Mentorship.
Bath Novel Award 2022 Shortlisted:
FARRAH YUSUF for ALMOST STRANGERS
Crime | unpublished
FARRAH YUSUF was born in Pakistan and lives in London. She was a solicitor and charity sector manager and is currently raising her young family. Her short fiction has listed in the BBC National Short Story Prize and she is newly represented by Honor Spreckley at RCW Literary Agency.
Almost Strangers is Farrah’s first novel and was written after becoming a mother and losing her own mum in close succession. It’s the story of an Insta-famous make-up artist whose nosy neighbour and social media followers become unlikely amateur detectives when she disappears without a trace.
Bath Novel Award 2022 Shortlisted:
SASHA BUTLER for AS SOFT AS DREAMS
Historical romance | unpublished
SASHA BUTLER lives in Birmingham, England where she works in marketing. She has a degree in English Literature from the University of Nottingham and has studied Creative Writing with Curtis Brown Creative and The British Library.
As Soft as Dreams is set in the Midlands during the first Elizabethan era and is the story of Eliza, who is forced into an arranged marriage after her childhood sweetheart goes missing. Sasha Butler is newly represented by Katie Fulford at Bell Lomax Moreton.
Bath Novel Award 2022 Shortlisted:
LOUISE TUCKER for THE LAST GIFT OF EMMELINE DAVIES
Book group | unpublished
Louise Tucker is a writer, editor and tutor and lives in London, England. Having spent most of her working life in academia and publishing, she started to concentrate on writing fiction after a significant birthday: “I spent hours encouraging students to write and yet never wrote anything myself.”
An early draft of THE LAST GIFT OF EMMELINE DAVIES won the inaugural PFD Lost the Plot Prize and was also shortlisted for the Bath Novel Award in 2019. Louise has just completed the MA in Prose Fiction at UEA, where she was awarded the 2021/2022 Annabel Abbs Scholarship.
Bath Novel Award 2022 Shortlisted:
KATHRYN SHARMAN for THE TASTE OF STRAWBERRIES
Commercial | unpublished
Kathryn Sharman lives in North Yorkshire, England with her husband and three children. She has an English Language & Literature degree with Distinction from Manchester University and has worked as a journalist and copywriter in London.
She began writing The Taste of Strawberries while studying for an MA in Creative Writing at York St John University. In this inter-generational story of family secrets, Kathryn draws upon her own personal experiences of pregnancy and motherhood, along with the loss of her grandmother to dementia.
Bath Novel Award 2022 Shortlisted:
JUSTIN COOKE for WE ARE WOLVES
Literary | unpublished
JUSTIN COOKE grew up in Dorset, England where he now lives and works as a contemporary artist. He studied for a degree in Fine Art at Newcastle University and is particularly inspired by wild beaches and the people, history and music of remote places.
An early draft of We Are Wolves was shortlisted for the 2018 Bridport Prize / Peggy Chapman-Andrews Award for a First Novel. Set in the isolated dunes of the Danish North Sea Coast, it is the story of Milla, a pianist who is haunted by the memory of a body which washed up at her childhood home.
“It gave me shivers and the writing is pretty flawless. It’s a powerful insight into the Syrian war torn setting and then the backstory narrative thread, and the promise she makes to the angels to keep her mother safe and then her guilt and shame that her life choices present to her and how she holds herself responsible for bad things happening to those she loves is really powerful. Powerful themes of love and loss, freedom of choice, cultural traditions and what is expected of a woman and so on.”
-Helen Corner-Bryant, founder and director of Cornerstones Literary Consultancy
The Cornerstones PWA Prize 2022 for most promising Bath Novel Award longlisted manuscript is awarded to IA Mahmoud for THE WOMAN WHO FOUGHT DEMONS AND WALKED WITH ANGELS.
Prize: Edit Your Novel course
| The Bath Novel Award 2022 Longlist | |
|---|---|
| All the Birds of the Air | Rachel Louise Driscoll |
| All Those Other Lives | Andrea Gillum |
| Almost Strangers | Farrah Yusuf |
| Angels and Blackbirds | John Alex Taylor |
| As Soft as Dreams | Sasha Butler |
| Belle Nash and the Bath Soufflé | William Keeling |
| Change is a Coming | Ayesha Farhat |
| Child Bred of Light | Monica Ibarra Parle |
| Eliza is Dead | Rosie Storey |
| Lullaby for the Left Behind | Jules Arbeaux |
| Past Participle | Jane Labous |
| Ring of Lions | Cass Dalglish |
| Small Town Malice | Adam Sefton |
| Smoke and Honey | Charlotte Morbey |
| Something of a Hoax | Rosanna Oram |
| The Confinement of Ada Atwood | Laura Faulkner |
| The Cuckoo and the Playing Piece | Alison Offer |
| The Last Gift of Emmeline Davies | Louise Tucker |
| The Left Behind | Maeve Clarke |
| The Locksmith's Table | Lucy Abdullah |
| The Lost Detective | Elspeth Latimer |
| The Secret Collector of Bartholomew Row | Abigail Johnson |
| The Secret Deed of Henry Thistlethwaite | Lauren Brown |
| The Taste of Strawberries | Kathryn Sharman |
| The Three Arrows | Tamako Takamatsu |
| The Woman Who Fought Demons and Walked with Angels | I A Mahmoud |
| Victoriana | Francesca Robbins |
| We Are Wolves | Justin Cooke |
Bath Novel Award 2022 Shortlist Announcement