MSt tutor Rebecca Abrams’ Jewish Treasures from Oxford Libraries, published in 2020 and co-edited with Cesar Merchan-Hamann, has been long-listed for the 2021 Wingate Literary Prize.
“The 2021 Wingate Literary Prize long list explores a diverse range of
important themes this year, including the Russian Empire, the Holocaust
and climate change.
Now in its 44th year, the annual prize, worth £4,000 and run in association with JW3, is awarded to the best book, fiction or non-fiction, to translate the idea of Jewishness to the general reader…
The Wingate Prize short list will be announced late January and the winner will be announced at the end of February.”
MSt tutors Jenny Lewis & George Szirtes will be reading at Poets & Writers Studio International, organised by Sudeep Sen and Indran Amirthanayagam on Saturday 9 Jan 2021 at 4 pm (GMT)/11 am (EST)/9.30 pm (IST).
MSt alumna Laura Theis collecttion “How to Extricate Yourself” has been published by Dempsey & Windle
From the announcement:
“What would it be like to be a writer in residence on the moon? Or to wake up with hair made out of spiders? To move in with a dragon? Or to raise a demon baby by accident? Simultaneously dark and funny, these poems let the reader escape into the realm of the imagination and the fantastical. Unafraid of asking ‘what if…’, the poems’ various speakers and narrative voices try to make sense of their narrowing world and sleepless nights through self-deception and make-believe, spells and incarnations, peeks into the possibilities of other worlds and lives.
Besides being awarded the 2020 Brian Dempsey Memorial Prize, the poems in this collection have won or been shortlisted for the Acumen Poetry Prize, the Geoff Stevens Memorial Poetry Prize, three consecutive Live Canon International Poetry Awards, the Hammond House Award, the Yeovil Prize, the Wirral Poetry Festival Competition, the Blue Nib Chapbook Contest, the Yaffle Prize, the Charroux Prize andthe Oxford Brookes Poetry Prize judged by Jackie Kay.
Praise for ‘how to extricate yourself’:
“How to Extricate Yourselfcombines vivid narrative, seriousness and delight in language that moves easily between wry imaginative energy and resonant pathos. This is a debut collection of admirable wit and invention, and introduces Laura Theis – already a successful fiction writer – as a poet of distinctive new voice.”
– Jane Draycott
“No one else does weird and tender quite like Laura Theis.”
– Kiran Millwood Hargrave
“Grabbed me not just for the overall quality from poem to poem but also from line to line… I could have read these poems all night and still have read some more.”
– Paul McGrane, who selected Laura Theis as the winner of the 2020 Brian Dempsey Memorial Pamphlet Prize
“A witty and playful collection from a gifted poet who blends delicate lyricism with candid confession. An engaging and fresh new voice.”
– Anna Saunders, 2020 Wirral Prize Judge & CEO of Cheltenham Poetry Festival
“In these poems which sing and see from a distance, Laura Theis is in complete control of tone – never forced or rushed, convinced the gentlemen callers will leave having not detected the fire in the grates of the witchy girls…. It is a book of entrances and exits – the astronaut’s wife, a lover on the moon – reports from a world where jellyfish are admirable, space and distance present both in the barely punctuated lines and between partner and partner. These poems are resourceful and magical, tracing infinity ‘the way bees love to eat / honey but also make honey.’“
– Matt Bryden, Judge of the 2020 Charroux Prize
“A sparkling debut…a small treasure box filled with surprising, unusual jewels.”
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