 | This article needs a plot summary.(July 2021) |
 First edition | |
| Author | Monique Roffey |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Peepal Tree Press |
Publication date | 2 April 2020 |
| Pages | 272 |
| ISBN | 978-1-84523-457-7 |
| OCLC | 1260160139 |
The Mermaid of Black Conch is the sixth novel by Monique Roffey, published in 2020.
Roffey first conceived of the novel's mermaid during a 2013 trip to Charlotteville, Tobago. [1]
In 2019, Roffey launched a Crowdfunder campaign to fund a publicity campaign for the novel. [2] The novel was first published on 2 April 2020 by Peepal Tree Press. [3] The rights were later acquired by Vintage Publishing. [4]
The Mermaid of Black Conch won the 2020 Costa Book of the Year award. [5] The novel was shortlisted for the 2020 Goldsmiths Prize, [6] and longlisted for the 2021 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction. [7]
The University of East Anglia's Creative Writing Course was founded by Sir Malcolm Bradbury and Sir Angus Wilson in 1970. The M.A. has been regarded among the most prestigious in the United Kingdom.
Ali Smith CBE FRSL is a Scottish author, playwright, academic and journalist. Sebastian Barry described her in 2016 as "Scotland's Nobel laureate-in-waiting".
Anthony Joseph FRSL is a British/Trinidadian poet, novelist, musician and academic. In 2023, he was awarded the T. S. Eliot Prize for his book Sonnets for Albert.
The Costa Book Awards were a set of annual literary awards recognising English-language books by writers based in UK and Ireland. Originally named the Whitbread Book Awards from 1971 to 2005 after its first sponsor, the Whitbread company, then a brewery and owner of pub-restaurant chains, it was renamed when Costa Coffee, then a subsidiary of Whitbread, took over sponsorship. The companion Costa Short Story Award was established in 2012. Costa Coffee was purchased by the Coca-Cola Company in 2018. The awards were abruptly terminated in 2022.
Peepal Tree Press is a publisher based in Leeds, England which publishes Caribbean, Black British, and South Asian fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama and academic books. Poet Kwame Dawes has said, "Peepal Tree Press's position as the leading publisher of Caribbean literature, and especially of Caribbean poetry, is unassailable."
Ira Mathur is an Indian-born Trinidad and Tobago multimedia freelance journalist, Sunday Guardian columnist and writer. The longest-running columnist for the Sunday Guardian, she has been writing an op-ed for the paper since 1995, except for a hiatus from 2003 to 2004 when she wrote for the Daily Express. She has written more than eight hundred columns on politics, economics, social, health and developmental issues, locally, regionally and internationally.
Bernardine Anne Mobolaji Evaristo is a British author and academic. Her novel Girl, Woman, Other jointly won the Booker Prize in 2019 alongside Margaret Atwood's The Testaments, making her the first Black woman to win the Booker. Evaristo is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University London and President of the Royal Society of Literature, the second woman and the first black person to hold the role since it was founded in 1820.
Francis Spufford FRSL is an English author and teacher of writing whose career has shifted 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 Spufford was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Evelyn Rose Strange "Evie" Wyld is an Anglo-Australian author. Her first novel, After the Fire, A Still Small Voice, won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 2009, and her second novel, All the Birds, Singing, won the Encore Award in 2013 and the Miles Franklin Award in 2014. Her third novel, The Bass Rock, won the Stella Prize in 2021.
Monique Pauline Roffey is a Trinidadian-born British writer and memoirist. Her novels have been much acclaimed, winning awards including the 2013 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, for Archipelago, and the Costa Book of the Year award, for The Mermaid of Black Conch in 2021.
Leone Ross FRSL is a British novelist, short story writer, editor, journalist and academic, who is of Jamaican and Scottish ancestry.
Kendel Hippolyte is a St Lucian poet and playwright.
Jacob Ross FRSL is a Grenada-born poet, playwright, journalist, novelist and creative writing tutor, based in the UK since 1984.
Sara Baume is an Irish novelist. She was named on Granta's Best of Young British Novelists list in 2023.
Jacqueline Bishop is a writer, visual artist and photographer from Jamaica, who now lives in New York City, where she is a professor at the School of Liberal Studies at New York University (NYU). She is the founder of Calabash, an online journal of Caribbean art and letters, housed at NYU, and also writes for the Huffington Post and the Jamaica Observer Arts Magazine. In 2016 her book The Gymnast and Other Positions won the nonfiction category of the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. She is a contributor to the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby.
The Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses is an annual British literary prize founded by the author Neil Griffiths. It rewards fiction published by UK and Irish small presses, defined as those with fewer than five full-time employees. The prize money – initially raised by crowdfunding and latterly augmented by sponsorship – is divided between the publishing house and the author.
Jessie Greengrass is a British author. She won a Somerset Maugham Award and the Edge Hill Short Story Prize for her debut short story collection An Account of the Decline Of The Great Auk, According To One Who Saw It.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 2020.
The Costa Book Award for Novel, formerly known as the Whitbread Award (1971–2005), was an annual literary award for novels, as part of the Costa Book Awards.
Shivanee Ramlochan is a Trinidadian poet, arts reporter and blogger. Her first collection of poems Everyone Knows I Am a Haunting was shortlisted for the 2018 Felix Dennis Prize for best first collection.