Five Leaves writer wins $150,000

The South African-born, Glasgow based, novelist and short-story writer Zoë Wicomb is one of two UK writers winning the Windham-Campbell award of $150,000 each (the other being the American-born playwright Naomi Wallace). Her latest book of short stories, The One that Got Away, was published by the Nottingham small independent Five Leaves and is the only one of her books available from a British publisher.
The One that Got Away is a collection linking her adopted residence of Glasgow with her country of birth.
Zoë Wicomb is currently a Professor in the Department of English Studies at Strathclyde University and Visiting Professor at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. In addition to two collections of short stories, she has published two novels, David’s Story and Playing in the Light. She has also been one of the judges on the IMPAC literary award.
The appearance of Zoë Wicomb’s first set of short stories, You Can’t Get Lost in Capetown, precipitated the founding of a fan club that has come to include Toni Morrison, J.M. Coetzee, Bharati Mukherjee, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, TLS and the New Yorker, though she remains fairly unknown in this country.
The One That Got Away straddles dual worlds. An array of characters inhabits a complexly interconnected, twenty-first century universe. The author explores a range of human relationships: marriage, friendship, family ties, and relations with those who serve us. Wicomb’s fluid, shifting technique makes for exhilarating reading, full of ironic twists, ambiguities, and moments of insight.
The Donald Windham-Sandy M. Campbell literature prizes at Yale University recognize emerging and established writers for outstanding achievement in fiction, non-fiction, and drama. This is its inaugural year and nine writers were awarded $150,000 each.
Ross Bradshaw, from Five Leaves Publications, said, “I have been a big fan of Zoë Wicomb's work since her first collection of short stories was published by Virago in 1987. I was astonished to discover that she did not have a UK publisher subsequently, so I approached her for UK rights to her most recent short story collection, which has also been published in South Africa and the USA.”
Zoë Wicomb said, “This is a validation I would never have dreamt of. I am overwhelmed — and deeply grateful for this generous prize. It will keep me for several years, and it will speed up the writing too since I can now afford to go away when the first draft proves difficult to produce in my own house”.
Copies of The One that Got Away are available from Five Leaves. Zoë Wicomb is available for interview via Five Leaves. Please contact Ross Bradshaw via fiveleaves.co.uk@googlemail.com.
Copies of The One That Got Away are available for purchase from http://www.inpressbooks.co.uk/the-one-that-got-away/

Books of the year

Everyone else does it, so here's ten books I read this year I would recommend... I wouldn't say they were my favourite books of the year (I published those ones) and they are in no particular order. Just ones that come to mind.

Deer Hunting with Jesus: guns, votes, debt and delusions in Redneck America by Joe Bargean (Portobello). Anyone reading this would have known the sub-prime market would collapse. See? One book could have saved the world's economy. Read this and weep. Yup, fucked over, heavily armed, anti-union... this lot will vote Palin for President if they get the chance.

Edward Carpenter: a life of liberty and love by Sheila Rowbotham (Verso). The big biography of the most interesting of sandal wearers, a socialist, a vegetarian, an adult education lecturer, a believer in “dress reform” and feminism who lived in an openly gay relationship near Chesterfield at a time when such things were considered impossible.

Homage to Caledonia: Scotland and the Spanish Civil War by Daniel Gray (Luath). This is the book that told me that in my home town workers took over a knitwear factory to make clothes for Spanish people and ran it as a co-op. Didn't learn that in school.

Every Secret Thing: my family, my country by Gillian Slovo (Virago). A re-read here, in prep for interviewing the author at Lowdham Book Festival. The family in question were Joe Slovo, who became a cabinet member in Mandela's government and Ruth First, assassinated by the apartheid regime.

Who was Sophie? by Celia Robertson (Virago). Celia's search to find out what had happened to “Sophie”, her grandmother, once a poet published by the Hogarth Press, who became a bag lady on the streets of Nottingham.

Cello by Frances Thimann (Pewter Rose). A book of short stories by a new press in Nottingham. Delightful cover, elegiac short stories about old age.

Writers on Islands edited by James Knox Whittett (Iron Press). An anthology by mostly well known writers about the islands around the coast of Britain and Ireland, including Kathleen Jamie, JM Synge, George MacKay Brown and many more. Lots of good short pieces.

Cold Granite by Stuart Macbride (Harper Collins). McBride's first tartan noire book, set in Aberdeen. Mentions many of my old haunts and it is good to know that police still feel unsafe visiting the Fersands estate where I used to live!

The One That Got Away by Zoe Wicomb (The New Press, USA). Internet only for this one for the moment, short stories set in South Africa and Glasgow, mostly with South African characters. One story, “N2” is near perfect.

Hackney, that Rose-Red Empire by Iain Sinclair (Hamish Hamilton, but due out in paperback in February). A rag bag, mishmash, rattle bag of Sinclair's usual concerns featuring a cast of the missing, the eccentric, the fictional, the even more unlikely factual.

There are probably others that would have been top tenners that I've forgotten, loaned out, returned to libraries, misplaced, but this seems a good enough selection. It was a good reading year, despite the misery in the book trade. Five of the ten were written by women and (phew) six were from independent presses.