Dylan Thomas Prize Shortlist to be announced on September 16

The shortlist for the Dylan Thomas Prize will be announced on September 16 in London. The prize, which is sponsored by the University of Wales, promotes and celebrates youthful talent, offering the winner an unprecedented chance to dedicate themselves to their creative endeavours. The £60,000 purse is, with the exception of the Nobel, the richest of any literary prize in the world. Judges include Andrew Davies, Owen Sheers, Miranda Sawyer and Peter Florence.

This year’s longlist is remarkable for its wide-ranging subject matter, and it’s especially pleasing to see poetry so well represented, with three of the UK’s most talented younger poets scoring a well-deserved place on the longlist: Kei Miller, Caroline Bird and Zoe Brigley.

Susan Fletcher, who won the Whitbread First Novel Award for her impressive debut Eve Green, is included for a highly acclaimed second novel, again set in Wales, Oystercatchers.

A full run-down of longlisted authors and their works can be found by clicking here

New Welsh Review would like to wish all the longlisted nominees the very best of luck for the announcement and, in particular, we will be keeping our fingers crossed for Wales’s strong contenders, Zoe Brigley and Joe Dunthorne. Zoe has been a regular contributor to New Welsh Review in recent years and her debut collection, The Secret, has met with strong critical acclaim. Joe Dunthorne has won plaudits for his witty and engaging analysis of teenage dysfunction in his native Swansea, Submarine, prompting comparisons with Salinger. Both will be reading at the Poetry, Prose and Pinot Grigio event I am hosting in Cardiff as part of Baylit 2008 (see below).

I’ll post on the shortlist announcement next week.