Fiona Mozley | |
---|---|
Born | 1988 (age 35–36) Hackney, London, England |
Citizenship | United Kingdom |
Genre | novel |
Notable works | Elmet Hot Stew |
Notable awards | Polari Prize (2018) Somerset Maugham Award (2018) |
Website | |
www |
Fiona Mozley (born 1988) [1] is an English novelist and medievalist. Her debut novel, Elmet , was shortlisted for the 2017 Booker Prize. [2]
Fiona Mozley was born in 1988 in the London Borough of Hackney, [3] and now lives in Edinburgh. She used to live in York, where she grew up and attended Fulford School. [4] In the meantime she spent periods in London, Cambridge and Buenos Aires before moving back to York in 2013. Besides writing fiction, she is engaged on a PhD thesis at the University of York [1] on the concept of decay in the later Middle Ages. She also works part-time in a bookshop. [5]
Mozley sees as York's most significant literature its Mystery Plays. These along with local drama groups she views "as having influenced my own writing more significantly than any books I have read." [6] When asked at an earlier interview about writers and works she particularly enjoyed, she mentioned some by Cormac McCarthy and Ursula Le Guin, and by Philip Pullman, whom she had loved as a child. [1] Mozley's novel Elmet appeared in the 2018 Irish Leaving Certificate English examination.[ citation needed ]
The name "Elmet" is taken from a Celtic kingdom that once covered West Yorkshire. In the novel, Mozley "wanted to capture the ambiguity of local historical recollections; to say something about their double-edged thrall; to examine the desire to live in the past and the need to extricate oneself from it." [7] [8] [9] [10]
The novel Elmet is concerned strongly with the idea of home, "the building of a house, the preparation of food; stolen glimpses of a woman's wardrobe." [11] This moves stealthily onto the fact that the 14-year-old narrator, Daniel, is not just domesticated, but must come to terms with being gay, or even transgender, while his older sister Cathy is a tomboy "raised in isolation by a man poorly suited to the job, and taught skills typically taken up by boys." [11] "Daddy" is kind to his two children, but otherwise known to be violent. The father's concern is for the land: "the wilderness tamed by man's benevolent but dictatorial hand... [that] provides fertile ground for the evil that men do." [11] The front cover of the novel was illustrated by Vanessa Lubach using a multilayered linocut technique. [12]
Mozley's second novel titled Hot Stew was published in 2021. Writing for The Guardian , Alex Preston praised the work and said it confirmed the author was "a writer of extraordinary empathic gifts". [13]
Yr | Work | Prize | Res | Ref | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
2017 | Elmet | Booker Prize | — | Shortlisted | [14] |
2018 | Dylan Thomas Prize | — | Longlist | [15] | |
Edmund White Award | — | Shortlisted | [16] | ||
Ondaatje Prize | — | Shortlisted | [17] | ||
Polari Prize | First Book | Won | [18] | ||
Somerset Maugham Award | — | Won | [19] | ||
Women's Prize for Fiction | — | Longlist | [20] | ||
2019 | Dublin Literary Award | — | Longlist | [21] | |
Europese Literatuurprijs | — | Longlist | [22] | ||
2021 | Hot Stew | Dylan Thomas Prize | — | Longlist | [23] |
The Booker Prize, formerly the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a literary award conferred each year for the best single work of sustained fiction written in the English language, which was published in the United Kingdom and/or Ireland. The winner of the Booker Prize receives £50,000, as well as international publicity that usually leads to a significant sales boost. When the prize was created, only novels written by Commonwealth, Irish, and South African citizens were eligible to receive the prize; in 2014, eligibility was widened to any English-language novel—a change that proved controversial.
The International Booker Prize is an international literary award hosted in the United Kingdom. The introduction of the International Prize to complement the Man Booker Prize, as the Booker Prize was then known, was announced in June 2004. Sponsored by the Man Group, from 2005 until 2015 the award was given every two years to a living author of any nationality for a body of work published in English or generally available in English translation. It rewarded one author's "continued creativity, development and overall contribution to fiction on the world stage", and was a recognition of the writer's body of work rather than any one title.
Paul Murray is an Irish novelist, the author of the novels An Evening of Long Goodbyes, Skippy Dies, The Mark and the Void, and The Bee Sting.
Rachel Cusk is a British novelist and writer.
Heather O'Neill is a Canadian novelist, poet, short story writer, screenwriter and journalist, who published her debut novel, Lullabies for Little Criminals, in 2006. The novel was subsequently selected for the 2007 edition of Canada Reads, where it was championed by singer-songwriter John K. Samson. Lullabies won the competition. The book also won the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and was shortlisted for eight other major awards, including the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Governor General's Award and was longlisted for International Dublin Literary Award.
Gail Jones is an Australian novelist and academic.
Oneworld Publications is a British independent publishing firm founded in 1986 by Novin Doostdar and Juliet Mabey originally to publish accessible non-fiction by experts and academics for the general market. Based in London, it later added a literary fiction list and both a children's list and an upmarket crime list, and now publishes across a wide range of subjects, including history, politics, current affairs, popular science, religion, philosophy, and psychology, as well as literary fiction, crime fiction and suspense, and children's titles.
Francis Spufford FRSL is an English author and teacher of writing whose career has seen him shift gradually from non-fiction to fiction. His first novel Golden Hill received critical acclaim and numerous prizes including the Costa Book Award for a first novel, the Desmond Elliott Prize and the Ondaatje Prize. In 2007 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
NoViolet Bulawayo is the pen name of Elizabeth Zandile Tshele, a Zimbabwean author. In 2012, the National Book Foundation named her a "5 under 35" honoree. She was named one of the Top 100 most influential Africans by New African magazine in 2014. Her debut novel, We Need New Names, was shortlisted for the 2013 Booker Prize, and her second novel, Glory, was shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize, making her "the first Black African woman to appear on the Booker list twice".
Anuradha Roy is an Indian novelist, journalist and editor. She has written five novels: An Atlas of Impossible Longing (2008), The Folded Earth (2011), Sleeping on Jupiter (2015), All the Lives We Never Lived (2018), and The Earthspinner (2021).
The Women's Prize for Fiction is one of the United Kingdom's most prestigious literary prizes. It is awarded annually to a female author of any nationality for the best original full-length novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom in the preceding year. A sister prize, the Women's Prize for Non-Fiction, was launched in 2023.
Heather Rose is an Australian author born in Hobart, Tasmania. She is the author of the acclaimed memoir Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here. She is best known for her novels The Museum of Modern Love, which won the 2017 Stella Prize, and Bruny (2019), which won Best General Fiction in the 2020 Australian Book Industry Awards. She has also worked in advertising, business, and the arts.
Hot Milk is a 2016 novel by British author Deborah Levy. It follows the story of mother, Rose, and daughter, Sofia, who embark on a journey to a Spanish clinic in search of a medical cure for Rose's paralysis.
Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ is a Nigerian writer. Her 2017 debut novel, Stay With Me, won the 9mobile Prize for Literature and the Prix Les Afriques. She was awarded The Future Awards Africa Prize for Arts and Culture in 2017.
Elmet is the 2017 debut novel by Fiona Mozley. In September 2017, it was shortlisted for the 2017 Booker Prize.
Fiona McFarlane is an Australian author, best known for her book The Night Guest and her collection of short stories The High Places. She is a recipient of the Voss Literary Prize, the UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing at the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, the Dylan Thomas Prize, and the Nita Kibble Literary Award.
Daisy Johnson is a British novelist and short story writer. Her debut novel, Everything Under, was shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize, and beside Eleanor Catton is the youngest nominee in the prize's history. For her short stories, she has won three awards since 2014.
Trent Dalton is an Australian novelist and journalist.
The 2020 Booker Prize for Fiction was announced on 19 November 2020. The Booker longlist of 13 books was announced on 27 July, and was narrowed down to a shortlist of six on 15 September. The Prize was awarded to Douglas Stuart for his debut novel, Shuggie Bain, receiving £50,000. Stuart is the second Scottish author to win the Booker Prize, after it was awarded to James Kelman for How Late It Was, How Late in 1994. The ceremony was hosted by John Wilson at the Roundhouse in Central London, and broadcast by the BBC. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the shortlisted authors and guest speakers appeared virtually from their respective homes.
Vanessa Lubach is a British artist noted for her unusually intricate and many-layered prints using linseed oil inks, as well as for her paintings and her book illustrations. She lives and works in Norfolk.