The Gordon Burn Prize

The latest New Writing North newsletter has arrived with details for submissions to The Gordon Burn Prize:

New Writing North, in association with Faber & Faber and the Gordon Burn Trust, is delighted to announce the second year of The Gordon Burn Prize and to open the award to new submissions. The first Gordon Burn Prize, created to honour the literary legacy of the late Newcastle-born author, was announced at a special event in October at the 2013 Durham Book Festival when author Ben Myers scooped the prize with his novel, Pig Iron. As winner, he received a cheque for £5,000 and the opportunity to undertake a three-month writing retreat at Gordon’s own cottage in Berwickshire.  The Gordon Burn Prize is open to both fiction and non-fiction titles written in English that capture the spirit of Gordon’s writing. Gordon was a novelist undaunted by convention or genre, and the judges are looking for a writer with a similarly intrepid approach to their craft. Publishers are invited to enter exceptional fiction that dares to enter history and interrogate the past, and non-fiction on subjects such as sport, art, crime and popular culture that is brave enough to recast characters and historical events to create a new and vivid reality. The book that wins the 2014 Gordon Burn Prize will be literature which challenges perceived notions of genre, a piece of writing that makes us think again about just what it is that we are reading. New Writing North is delighted to be part of an award that not only honours an author as significant and challenging as Gordon Burn, but also encourages other authors to follow his example and push the boundaries of their work. “The Gordon Burn Prize rewards innovative work across both fiction and non-fiction which best represents the spirit of Gordon’s prose,” said Faber Social creative director Lee Brackstone. “In a celebrity-saturated world, which is increasingly documented in monochrome and monotonous style, it is thrilling to be associated with a prize that embraces adventurous and unusual ways of engaging with the culture.” The judges for the 2014 prize are artist Sarah Lucas; poet and novelist John Burnside; comedian, actor and musician Julian Barratt; and 2013 winner Ben Myers. Deadline for submissions: 14 February 2014 Please see www.newwritingnorth.com for full terms and conditions as well as submission guidelines and visit www.gordonburntrust.com for further details on Gordon’s work and the prize. You can listen to Ben Myers reading from his work, as well as selections from the other shortlisted authors in this recording of the prize-giving event on our SoundCloud stream.

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