The Luminaries shortlisted for International Thomas Dylan Prize
Eleanor Catton's multi-award winning second novel is up for yet another prestigious prize.
MA in Creative Writing graduate Eleanor Catton's second novel, The Luminaries (Victoria University Press / Granta), has been shortlisted for the 2014 International Thomas Dylan Prize; the world's biggest literary prize for young writers.
The Luminaries has already won the Man Booker Prize and the Canadian Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction, both in 2013, and in 2014 it won both the Fiction and People's Choice categories of the New Zealand Post Book Awards. Her first novel The Rehearsal (VUP / Granta, 2008), which she wrote as her MA in Creative Writing thesis, was also shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize, among others.
The £30,000 International Dylan Thomas Prize is awarded to the best published or produced literary work in the English language, written by an author aged 39 or under. This year's shortlist includes poetry, prose and drama by writers of many nationalities, including the Jamaican-born, Scotland-based Kei Miller, who held a masterclass with MA in Creative Writing students at the IIML earlier this year, while he was a guest of the New Zealand Festival Writers Week.
Peter Stead, founder and President of the International Dylan Thomas Prize, said:
'Given the strength of our longlist, we judges knew that choosing a shortlist would be a difficult process. In the end, seven wonderful works stood out.
We are thrilled that a play written and performed in Wales and a Caribbean poet from Glasgow will be gracing the shortlist which also consists of two American writers and novelists from Ireland, England and New Zealand.
Several of the books on the shortlist have already been honoured and this indicates the extent to which the International Dylan Thomas Prize has earned its place at the forefront of world literature.
We will be inviting to Swansea seven of the best writers in the world.'
The winner will be announced in November 2014.
Read the full shortlist and more about the Dylan Thomas Prize.