| Costa Book Awards Winners |
 Costa Coffee have announced the Costa Book Awards 2011 winners in the Novel, First Novel, Biography, Poetry and Children’s Book categories.
Originally established in 1971 by Whitbread PLC, Costa announced its takeover of the sponsorship of the UK's popular and prestigious book prize in 2006. 2011 marks the 40th year of the Book Awards. The five successful authors who will now compete for the 2011 Costa Book of the Year are:
“The Costa Book Awards have an excellent track record of recognising and celebrating some of the very best current British writing, and books that can be enjoyed by everyone,” said John Derkach, Managing Director, Costa. “We’re very proud to be announcing such a terrific collection of books which we know people will enjoy reading.” The five Costa Book Award winners, each of whom will receive £5,000, were selected from 568 entries. The five books are now eligible for the ultimate prize - the 2011 Costa Book of the Year. The winner, selected by a panel of judges chaired by Editor of the London Evening Standard, Geordie Greig and comprising Hugh Dennis, Dervla Kirwan, Mary Nightingale, William Fiennes, Flora Fraser, Patrick Gale, Jojo Moyes and Eleanor Updale, will be announced at an awards ceremony hosted by presenter and broadcaster Penny Smith at Quaglino’s in central London on Tuesday 24 January 2012. Since the introduction of the Book of the Year award in 1985, it has been won nine times by a novel, four times by a first novel, five times by a biography, seven times by a collection of poetry and once by a children’s book. The 2010 Costa Book of the Year was Of Mutability by Jo Shapcott. COSTA NOVEL AWARD WINNER 2011
Deep in the heart of Paris its oldest cemetery is, by 1785, overflowing. Its stench hangs in the air, tainting the very breath of those who live nearby. The over-filled graves pop and burst, filling people’s basements with bones and spreading disease across the capital. But the cemetery’s roots are embedded deep in the hearts and minds of the people, for whom the graveyard has long provided a backdrop to their daily lives. Into their midst comes Jean-Baptiste Baratte, a young, provincial engineer charged by the king with demolishing it. At first Baratte sees this as a chance to clear the burden of history. But before long, he begins to suspect that the destruction of the cemetery might be a prelude to his own. About the author: Andrew Miller was born in Bristol in 1960. He has lived in Spain, Japan, Ireland and France, and currently lives in Somerset. His first novel, Ingenious Pain, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Grinzane Cavour prize in Italy. The book has been translated into 36 languages. He has since written five novels: Casanova, Oxygen, which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel Award and the Booker Prize in 2001, The Optimists, One Morning Like a Bird and Pure. What the judges said: “A structurally and stylistically flawless historical novel, this book is a gripping story, beautifully written and emotionally satisfying. A novel without a weakness from an author who we all feel deserves a wider readership.” COSTA FIRST NOVEL AWARD WINNER 2011
Blessing and her brother Ezikiel adore their larger-than-life father, their glamorous mother and their comfortable life in Lagos. But all that changes when their father leaves them for another woman. Their mother is fired from her job at the Royal Imperial Hotel – only married women can work there – and soon they have to quit their air-conditioned apartment to go and live with their grandparents in a compound in the Niger Delta. Adapting to life with a poor countryside family is a shock beyond measure. About the author: Christie Watson is a qualified nurse and part-time resuscitation officer working clinically and teaching across two London teaching hospitals. She began her nurse training at Great Ormond Street Hospital aged seventeen and worked for eighteen years in a variety of settings, eventually focusing on Children's Intensive Care at St Mary's Hospital. Christie grew up in Stevenage and worked part-time from the age of thirteen. After leaving school and home at sixteen, she fell into nursing, but always wanted to write. She began writing while on maternity leave and won a place on the UEA Creative Writing MA, where she was awarded the Malcolm Bradbury Bursary. Tiny Sunbirds Far Away began life as a short story and was the very first fiction Christie had ever written. Christie was inspired to write the book after her first visit to Nigeria over ten years ago. She also wanted to write about political issues as well as her family. Her partner is Nigerian and Muslim and they have three daughters and a diverse family of many different faiths and backgrounds all over Nigeria and the UK. Christie continues to write, nurse, and raise her children in London which she says, apart from Lagos, is the best city in the world. What the judges said: “This book was our unanimous winner. Readability and literary merit go hand in hand in this vibrant gem of a novel.” COSTA BIOGRAPHY AWARD WINNER 2011
Now All Roads Lead to France is an account of the final five years of Edward Thomas’s life, centred on his extraordinary friendship with Robert Frost and Thomas’s fatal decision to fight in the First World War. The book also evokes an astonishingly creative moment in English literature: characters such as W B Yeats, Ezra Pound, Robert Frost and Rupert Brooke surround a central figure, tormented by his work and his marriage. As his friendship with Frost blossomed, Thomas wrote poem after poem, and his emotional affliction began to lift. In 1914, the two friends formed the ideas that would produce some of the most remarkable verse of the twentieth century. But the War put an ocean between them: Frost returned to the safety of New England while Thomas stayed to fight, culminating in his tragic death on Easter Monday 1917. About the author: Matthew Hollis was born in 1971 in Norwich, and studied at the universities of Edinburgh and York. His first collection of poems, Ground Water (2004), is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for the 2004 Guardian First Book Award, the Whitbread Poetry Award and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. He also edited 101 Poems Against War (2003) with Paul Keegan, and Strong Words: Modern Poets on Modern Poetry (2000) with W N Herbert. In 2001 he took part in the Arts Council 'First Lines' UK poetry tour, and was selected by the British Council to participate in 'Write On!' (Croatia) and 'Converging Lines' (Hungary) in 2004. He is a tutor for the Poetry School in London and has taught creative writing in schools and universities. In 2011, he edited the Selected Poems of Edward Thomas and wrote Now All Roads Lead to France: The Last Years of Edward Thomas, his first prose book and winner of the 2011 H W Fisher Best First Biography Prize. Matthew Hollis lives in London where he works as an editor at Faber and Faber. What the judges said: “Dramatic and engrossing. A brilliant biography that moved us all.” COSTA POETRY AWARD WINNER 2011
The Bees is Carol Ann Duffy's first collection of new poems as Poet Laureate and finds Duffy using her full poetic range. There are drinking songs, love poems, poems to the weather, poems of political anger - there are elegies, too, for beloved friends and most movingly, the poet's own mother. As Duffy's voice rises in this collection, her music intensifies and every poem patterns itself into song. Weaving through the book is its presiding spirit: the bee. In the end, Duffy's point is clear: the bee symbolizes what we have left of grace in the world, and what is most precious and necessary for us to protect. About the author: Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy was born in Glasgow and read philosophy at Liverpool University. Her adult poetry collections include Standing Female Nude (1985), Selling Manhattan (1987), which won a Somerset Maugham Award, The Other Country (1990), Mean Time (1993), which won the Whitbread Poetry Award and the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year), The World’s Wife (1999), Feminine Gospels (2002), and Rapture (2005), winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize. She has also won the Lannan Literary Award and the E. M. Forster Prize in America. Carol Ann Duffy has won the Signal Prize for Children’s Verse and she also writes picture books for children including Underwater Farmyard, Moon Zoo and The Princess's Blankets. She has written three Christmas poetry books: Mrs Scrooge, Another Night Before Christmas and The Christmas Truce and has edited several poetry anthologies. She is also an acclaimed playwright and has had plays performed at the The Young Vic, Liverpool Playhouse, and Bristol Old Vic. Carol Ann Duffy lives in Manchester and is Creative Director of the Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University. She became Poet Laureate in 2009, the first woman to hold the post, and was awarded an OBE in 1995, a CBE in 2001 and became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1999. What the judges said: “We were thrilled by the poet’s musical feeling for language and her spellbinding ability to combine naturalness and formal complexity. It’s a joyful collection.” COSTA CHILDREN’S BOOK AWARD WINNER 2011
Blood Red Road is set in a lawless future land, where life is cheap and survival is hard. Saba’s twin brother is stolen by mysterious, black-robed riders. She sets out on a desperate journey to find him. Ahead lie violence and treachery, and Saba will need a spirit as tough as her crossbow to survive. But her companions are the cleverest bird that ever flew, and a handsome thief with eyes the colour of moonlight… About the author: Moira Young was born in 1959 in New Westminster, British Columbia, and is of Scots and Cornish descent. After graduating from the University of British Columbia with a degree in European History, she moved to the UK to attend The Drama Studio, gaining her equity card on the alternative comedy circuit in the mid-80s. She became a tap-dancing chorus girl in London’s West End, appearing in High Society, directed by Richard Eyre, before returning to Canada and retraining as an opera singer. In 1991, Moira won the Metropolitan Opera Regional Auditions in Western Canada and she has sung in opera throughout the UK and Europe. Moira wrote her first book aged nine but didn’t take up writing seriously until 2003, when she enrolled on Elizabeth Hawkins’ Writing for Children course and workshop at the City Lit. In 2006, Moira moved to Bath, where she still lives with her husband, and worked at the Bath Chronicle as PA to the Editor. She is now a full-time writer and is working on her second book. Blood Red Road has recently been optioned for film by Ridley Scott’s production company, Scott Free UK, and is currently being adapted by award-winning playwright and screenwriter, Jack Thorne. What the judges said: “It’s astonishing how, in her first novel, Moira Young has so successfully bound believable characters into a heart-stopping adventure. She kept us reading, and left us hungry for more. A really special book.” |
