Change
4 June 2007
I’ve just spent 20 minutes wrestling with the printer, getting it to produce change of address cards. Perhaps it might have been easier to write them by hand!
The house we’ve bought was built in 1906. The historical part of Sepulchre partly takes place in the 1890s, although France not England. But it seems incredible to me that this tangible lump of history – my new home – was first lived in less than a generation from that distant past.
This is a busy week. Moving house, final edits of Sepulchre. Plus the presentations of the £30,000 Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction, with its beautiful commemorative statue – the Bessie.
The shortlists are remarkable – as ever – testament to a brilliant set of judges and the amazing quality of the novels submitted from women writing in English the world over. Here they are in alphabetical order by author:
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Arlington Park by Rachel Cusk
The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai
A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo
The Observations by Jane Harris
Digging to America by Anne Tyler
For the sister prize, the Orange Broadband Award for New Writers, which celebrates international first fiction written by women, also in alphabetical order by author:
Poppy Shakespeare by Clare Allan
The Lizard Cage by Karen Connelly
Bitter Sweets by Roopa Farooki
As always, I have no idea who is going to win either!
… plus there’s the short story competition, in partnership with Harpers Bazaar. Greg's running a workshop for the three shortlisted authors tomorrow. (Clare Allan, shortlisted for the first novel prize, won the first ever Harpers/Orange short story competition five years ago … how time flies!)
Now, do I have envelopes to fit those change of address cards?
I hope you enjoy exploring the Sepulchre.
