CARDIFF’S Philip Jones has been shortlisted for the inaugural New Welsh Writing Awards 2015.
First prize includes £1,000 cash, e-publication by New Welsh Review and a weekend stay at Gladstone’s library in Flintshire. Their work will also be critiqued by leading literary agent Cathryn Summerhayes and includes a lunch in London.
The New Welsh Writing Awards 2015 is sponsored by WWF Cymru and CADCentre and offers a prize for writing on nature and the environment.
Judges are looking for memoirs set mainly in landscape; character-based journal set outdoors; creative non-fiction pieces about “being unplugged”; journal involving wild animals or birds, or memoir set in an outdoor cityscape.
Philip Jones text Waves on the Hydrocarbon Seas of Titan is set on Newgale Beach in Pembrokeshire. A moving account of surfing, grief and waves of all types from light and sound to the seas of distant planets, is a memoir where sport, landscape, climate and science meet.
His work takes three neglected subjects: the Welsh landscape, the science of waves and the sport of surfing. It uses a controlled voice in relation to its personal story or morning, and a clever tripartite structure to fully exploit the long essay form promoted by this prize.
Judge Gwyn Davies said: “Both me and co-judge Mark Cocker hope this will encourage writers to take up the topic of the Welsh Landscape and nature. We are looking for work which blurs the outdoors and nature, I also hope we receive urban and post industrial entries. We are looking for character based narratives and human satire. Essays that interrogate a hot environmental topic are welcomed.
“In terms of what we are looking for, non fiction only that looks at the nature of the environment in a positive light. ”
This is a brand new prize for previously unpublished non-fiction writing of between 8,000 and 30,000 words. It is open to UK and Ireland residents, plus individuals living worldwide who have been educated in Wales. Work should take the subject or setting of nature, the outdoors, landscape or the environment.
Also Nominated were:
Blurred Boundaries, Ellie Rees
Banjar Dalung, Timothy L. Marsh
Energy Crisis – A Memoir of Summer, Philippa Holloway
Scenes from a Hokkaidan Life, Eluned Gramich
The long list will be announced at a ceremony at the Old College, Aberystwyth, on Wednesday 25 February 2015.
