The Silk Prize 2021
The Bath Novel Awards and UWE Bristol are delighted to announce that Yara Hoogland has won The Silk Prize 2021 for outstanding achievement by a student during the Creative and Professional Writing BA at the University of the West of England.
Senior Lecturer Katy Mahood nominated finalists, with the winning novel judged by Bath Novel Award founder Caroline Ambrose. The top four finalists received individual manuscript feedback. Yara also received £100 in book vouchers.
Yara said: ‘What an amazing (and unexpected) way to end the course! I’m quite proud indeed and grateful for the kind comments. I’m excited for a future in writing.’
Founder of the Bath Novel Awards Caroline Ambrose said: “This was an amazing shortlist – so much talent, which made it as difficult as it was enjoyable as the judge to read and pick a winner. In the end, my winner was Yara Hoogland for HOMEBOUND. Yara is an exciting and compelling new voice with characters that lift off the page and live and breathe. Her winning piece demonstrates skilful storytelling techniques and is full of craft. What’s not to love?”
Senior Lecturer Katy Mahood, who was longlisted for the Bath Novel Award in 2016, said: ‘I’m so proud of the quality of writing that we’ve seen among our students and the resilience and commitment they’ve all shown. HOMEBOUND is a piece of extraordinary depth, bringing together captivating storytelling and an immersive world with intricately drawn characters and a powerful social commentary. Yara is a writer of great talent and I look forward to seeing her career blossom!’
Silk Prize Winner and Finalist Biographies
Pictured: Yara Hoogland (top) Ellie Potts (bottom left) Jessie Johnson (bottom centre) Isaac Smalldon-Jones(bottom right)
Yara Hoogland – winner
Yara Hoogland is a Dutch-native crime fiction enthusiast. Her first novel HOMEBOUND is an exploration into the representation, judgement and treatment of the homeless, as much as it is a murder mystery. Yara is excited for a future in writing, and hopes to see her novel in bookstores one day.
Ellie Potts – finalist
Ellie is a travel-happy writer, copywriter, marketer, and poet, who functions on caffeine and optimism. When she is not writing copy for marketing campaigns, funding applications and blog pages, she can be found writing creatively or reading furiously. Her love of all things fiction and ‘self-help’ non-fiction informs her writing. She is constantly working on one poem or another, with the dream of one day releasing her own anthology. To rest her eyes from staring at her writing, Ellie goes outdoors. She loves to walk, run, surf, and do photography. Although not all at the same time. Going on adventures helps her understand her thoughts and sharpen the function of her writerly brain.
Jessie Johnson – finalist
Jessie Johnson is a Bristol-based Welsh writer, soon to start a master’s in Creative Writing at the University of Bristol. She is currently developing writing workshops aimed at under-represented groups as part of UWE’s Innovation and Enterprise scholarship scheme. Outside of education, Jessie performs comedy and is working on a novel.
Isaac Smaldon-Jones – finalist
Isaac is an aspiring novelist from a rural town in Devon whose life-long fascination with macabre has led him down the strange pathways of cosmic horror, dark fantasy, and black comedy. Class struggle, existentialism, and the cosmic insignificance of humanity are motifs that crop up particularly often in his work. He’s not bitter, he swears.
The Silk Prize 2020
We are delighted to announce Samuel Whitlock has won The Silk Prize 2020 for outstanding achievement by a student during the Creative and Professional Writing BA at the University of the West of England.
Senior Lecturer Kim Sherwood nominated finalists with the winning novel judged by Bath Novel Award founder Caroline Ambrose. The top four finalists received individual manuscript and synopsis feedback. Sam also received £100 in book vouchers.
Sam said: “I am so thankful to both Caroline Ambrose and Kim Sherwood. After wrestling with some serious self-doubt for a long time, I feel fresh courage to keep moving towards the dream of a published novel. And – after receiving some very insightful feedback – I feel I have a strategy to get there.”
Caroline Ambrose said: “The quality of the finalists’ submissions was impressive. Sam was my winner for his extract from NEW ORIGINS, a betrayal plot with a populist political backdrop set in a vividly evoked Ancient Rome. In aspiring laundry owner Gnaeus, Sam has created an intriguing and edgy lead who begins a dirty intelligence racket with his angry and until recently long lost younger brother. The world feels authentic with a cast of intriguing minor characters and dialogue rich with subtext.”
Kim Sherwood, who won The Bath Novel Award in 2016 with Testament commented: “I am so proud of all our students this year. Special congratulations to Samuel Whitlock, a writer with exceptional breadth and depth. Samuel has a way with language that will make you want to linger over his sentences, and a true storyteller’s power to immerse you in his world. Sharp, memorable and thought-provoking, Samuel is the real deal, and I look forward to watching his career as a writer bloom.”
The Silk Prize 2019
We are delighted to announce Shona Mallalieu has won the inaugural Silk Prize for outstanding achievement by a student during the Creative and Professional Writing BA at the University of the West of England.
Senior Lecturer Kim Sherwood nominated four finalists with the winning novel judged by Bath Novel Award founder Caroline Ambrose. All finalists received individual manuscript and synopsis feedback. Shona also received a stack of Bath Novel Award listed novels.
Shona said: “I am so overwhelmed and honoured by all the amazing feedback I have had, and I’m going to use all of that moving forward.”
Caroline Ambrose said: “What a delight to read the finalists’ manuscripts. Shona Mallalieu was my winner for THE BONES BENEATH HER, a beautiful, vulnerable and powerful novel about Remy, an ex addict who is eight months’ clean and near to relapse when she finds a life changing sum of money at a murder scene. While the premise is dark, Remy’s voice shines out and I found myself rooting for Remy from page one. It was as though her hand reached out of the manuscript and pulled me right into her world, the pages turned themselves. Shona’s writing is arresting, vivid and moving; an author with the gift to pack a powerful punch while writing with the lightest touch.”
Kim Sherwood, who won The Bath Novel Award with Testament in 2016 commented: “It’s been a joy and a privilege to teach these wonderful writers at every stage of their degree. With such a talented group, it was very hard to choose just four students for the shortlist. Shona Mallalieu, Cara Squires, Sophie Pearn and Sophie Cole all rose to the challenge, producing original work that lingers in the mind – powerful, moving, funny, unexpected, deeply felt, and finely wrought. What stands out most perhaps in all of these extracts is voice – all of these writers have something to say, and a new and exciting voice in which to say it.”
“THE BONES BENEATH HER stands out for its stunning descriptive language, understanding of character, and masterful pace. It was a joy to help choose the winning novel with Caroline. I have been lucky enough to read this manuscript over the past year. Shona Mallalieu is a natural born talent with the commitment to back it up, and that is borne out in this extraordinary extract. Her fiction offers distinctive and unforgettable imagery, unflinching and arresting descriptions of life as an addict, a thrilling plot, and spot on observations of ourselves as people, and the society we live in.”
“This a novel that manages to articulate our deepest truths, a novel that will make you think, feel, laugh out loud, and cry. Shona’s manuscript has it all – from character to plot to language – and I think it will speak to a lot of people, just as it has spoken to me on so many levels. I believe her book heralds an important voice in contemporary fiction. What a joy to read such an exciting novel as it finds its way into the world.”
Extract: THE BONES BENEATH HER by Shona Mallalieu
When I was six, I found the decomposing body of a mouse in the garden. An offering from the neighbourhood tabby, no doubt. I used to hop along the path of concrete slabs that cut through the centre barefoot, imagining the grass was molten lava. The tiny body was presented neatly on the cold surface of the first slab. I put it in a box and kept it in my room. Every day I checked on it, to watch how it changed, how it was slowly eaten away – never disappearing completely – until all that remained was the thin white frame of its skeleton. I held it in my chubby palm, this memento of a life. I’d spend hours examining it, nursing it. A secret I knew I had to keep.
On the day my mother caught me, she slapped it out of my hands. Three red stripes bloomed.
That’s dirty Remy! What are you doing with that thing?!
I said nothing. I’d felt it slip from my grasp, watched it fall to the floor and shatter, the top of its spine separating like chalk from its skull. I didn’t cry.
Mama. You killed her.
My whispered words hung strangely in the air. I remember feeling as though the room was filling with water. Don’t be ridiculous, you can’t kill something that’s already dead!
The roses on her skirt – like bloody thumbprints – swished and disappeared behind the door, leaving me crouched with my chin in my knees, alone with a twice dead thing.
You can’t kill something that is already dead.
This is one of my earliest memories. I don’t like to think about the past. Fortunately, there are whole periods that are completely dark, years I don’t recall. As for the things I do remember, my life has been one long, drawn out attempt to forget, with varying degrees of success.
But some memories are persistent. Some are impossible to erase, and impossible to escape. In the locked room of my mind they play themselves, rewind and play again, and all I can do is watch, trying to find the answer, the truth, the lie, the way it all clicks into place, the way the puzzle fits. I would learn later on just how wrong my mother was. Some inexplicable part of me recognised it the moment I found those bones. A recognition as immediate and vital as the palm of my hand that day, hot and stinging. Things can die over and over, again and again.
* * *
Finalist Cara Squires was published in “Project Boast”, an all-female poetry anthology and is currently working on her first crime novel about the corruptive power of wealth. Cara is about to begin a Creative Writing MA at Bath Spa University.
Kim Sherwood said: “Cara Squires’ novel Firewood stands out for its dry humour, sassy voice, strong character dynamics, and ability to ramp up the suspense.”
Extract: FIREWOOD by Cara Squires
The inferno was bursting out from within, turning the redbrick manor black. The rose garden was ash. Even from the middle of the lake, Amanda felt the heat. Would they see the fire in Newtown? Could a fire engine even make it through the snow if the drifts were as tall as Talia had described?
Amanda trod water. In the pitch black of the early morning, in the shadow of a burning sky and a spreading fire, fat tears rolled down Amanda’s face and dripped off her chin. They were welcome drops of warmth in a pool of cold. Tears of relief, of grief, of horror. Never
usually one to herald fate and destiny, she felt in this moment that everything in her life had led her to Eleanor Fellows.
Amanda had no way of knowing what would happen now. Whether help would come or whether she would be able to make it to help. Whether anyone would ever be prosecuted for what Eleanor endured. But in this moment, it was enough for her that she knew exactly what had happened. That, even if nobody but Amanda ever knew, Eleanor was no longer bearing the weight of her trauma alone.
A burning, nagging pain rose to the surface of Amanda’s thoughts. She looked down at her shoulder. The bleeding seemed to have slowed, but it was difficult to tell exactly what was going on by the light of the distant flames. The corpse floated ever closer, growing heavier, retaining water. Amanda swam across the lake. Her right ankle throbbed with every kick, but eventually she reached the dock and heaved herself up. Normally, Tony would have made some kind of joke by now. Instead, there was silence, disturbed only by the fire’s hungry consumption. The forest beyond the fire was still. It seemed to know that years and years of pain were burning up at its centre.
Sophie Pearn is a socially conscious writer who is inspired to create stories about empowering characters who experience transformation in unlikely circumstances. In her novel Ada must escape a deadly cult in France after being enticed into a life of alternative living in a Parisian squat.
Having grown in confidence during the UWE course, she hopes to take a Masters in fiction writing.
Kim Sherwood said: “Sophie Pearn’s novel Caged in Bohemia stands out for its strong sense of place, and its sensual and rich language juxtaposed with strong and building tension.
Extract: CAGED IN BOHEMIA by Sophie Pearn
Lucien explains the building used to be a clothing factory that went out of business in the mid-1970s. Old fashioned sewing machines are still fixed to the ground floor. Mostly artists and musicians live here, but there are wanderers passing through. The ingenuity people possess here is impressive. Makeshift bedrooms are formed using anything from dust sheets to table tops. Each space stamped with personality depending on the person it houses. Some areas are just dirty rags draped over pillows. Others have posters and candles with incense burning. There are elements of the building that can’t be disguised but with imagination they are transformed for practical purposes. Washing lines are strung to overhead pipework and rainwater is collected in barrels underneath holes in the roof.
In a matter of hours, I’ve almost forgotten why I’ve come to Paris. Walls as big as my house spray painted with unfinished murals distract me. I try to fill in the blanks surrounding people here, but its as if no one conforms to an identity, each and everyone living in the moment, their ties to the outside world severed. Lucien tells me to make myself at home. I sit crossed leg on a mattress daydreaming, while I wait for his return.
Sophie Cole is a junior copywriter at a leading written communications agency in Bristol who hopes to use her love of words to shake up the way that businesses communicate.
Her novel explores intergenerational secrets and “the pressure to be unflappable in an increasingly stressful world.”
Sophie said: “The creative and professional writing course at UWE has helped me see that it’s possible to genuinely do something you love every single day, despite facing opposition along my journey from people in my working-class community who didn’t see writing as a ‘real career’. You can take a risk and have it pay off if you’re willing to never give up on your dream, or yourself.”
Kim Sherwood said: “Sophie Cole’s novel Don’t Crack stands out for its emotional insight, wry humour and gripping narrative voice.”
Extract: DON’T CRACK by Sophie Cole
I knew she was dead as soon as I heard those cries. The memory haunts me every time I’m alone. It’s there in every moment of silence, every lull in conversation, every time I stop to catch my breath. Of course, I’ve never shared it with anyone. But I know something was connecting us at that moment, some kind of folie a deux that meant only I could feel her pain. She was crying out for my help.
My grandma didn’t want to die. But I let her go.
The day had started as they always seemed to. Slept through the alarm. Woke up in a panic. Tried to brush my hair and my teeth at the same time, only to smear toothpaste in my already matted hair and whack myself on the head with the brush. Sat down on the toilet. Felt those familiar waves of panic crash over me. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Stood up as soon as my head stopped spinning. Pulled on an outfit that vaguely co-ordinated in the gloom of my bedroom. Left the house. Realised my outfit was far too creased to be acceptable. Said fuck it. Ran to the bus stop. Squeezed in between the unwashed bodies.
Eau de BO filled the packed, sweaty bus as it trundled through the congested streets of the city centre. I grabbed a mirror from my bag and inspected my face. I pulled out my mascara but abandoned it quickly, resolving that the ripe armpit looming dangerously close to the wand was a recipe for an eye infection. I’d have to find 5 minutes for some mascara and concealer before my first meeting, so my client didn’t run away in fear. I sighed. Prioritising sleep over beauty wasn’t wise when my bare face made me look like a mole rat on crack.
I shuffled off the bus and into the crisp morning air. It stung my cheeks and I pulled my ugly puffer jacket tighter around me, sinking down deeper into the hideous checked material. I’d found it at a charity shop three years ago and as soon as I put it on, I felt as though I’d met my soul mate in coat form. I mean, not really, but it was incredibly warm, cheerfully colourful and less than £20. And as soon as I saw how much it pissed my mum off, who called it ‘vulgar’ and ‘disgusting’, I resolved to wear it until it literally fell apart.