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Ali Shaw Wins £10,000 Desmond Elliott Prize

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Former bookseller from Dorset is named
 ‘author of the future’ by judges 

Ali Shaw was tonight (Wednesday, 23 June) named the winner of the £10,000 Desmond Elliott Prize for The Girl with Glass Feet, published by Atlantic Books.
 
Elizabeth Buchan, Chair of the Judges, comments,
 
“After some soul searching and much debate, we decided on The Girl with Glass Feet as our winner. This is an extraordinary first novel - bold, original, tragic and endlessly surprising. In its exploration of frozen landscapes, both interior and exterior, and in its precisely detailed and articulated fantasy, it is possible to see a substantial author of the future.”
 
Ali Shaw has worked as a bookseller and at Oxford’s Bodleian Library, but is now concentrating solely on his writing and is currently penning his second novel.
 
Shaw spent almost five years writing The Girl with Glass Feet. He drew inspiration from Kafka’s Metamorphosis which led him to reading fairy stories and folklore. From here, he began exploring his own style using magical or fantastical elements within his writing as a way to express emotion.
 
As with his two predecessors, winners Edward Hogan in 2009 and Nikita Lalwani in 2008, Ali Shaw is also a graduate of a university writing course. For all three, this has proved to be a successful step in becoming a published author. The Desmond Elliott Prize website includes a page of resources designed to support aspiring writers - http://www.desmondelliottprize.org/links.asp
 
The other books on the shortlist were Before the Earthquake by Maria Allen and Talk of the Town by Jacob Polley.
 
The Desmond Elliott Prize is a new prize for first novels, now in its third year. When judging the prize, the judges are looking for a novel of depth and breadth with a compelling narrative. The work should be vividly written and confidently realised and should contain original and arresting characters. Entries are considered from all fiction genres.
 
The inaugural prize was won by Nikita Lalwani in 2008 for her novel, Gifted. The novel enjoyed great critical and popular success and went on to be named as one of The Observer’s Books of the Year. The Desmond Elliott Prize 2009 was won by Edward Hogan for his novel, Blackmoor.  Edward lives in Brighton and is currently writing his second novel with support from the Prize.  
 
 
The Winner
 
The Girl with Glass Feet by Ali Shaw (Atlantic Books)
 
A mysterious and frightening metamorphosis has befallen Ida MacLaird – she is slowly turning into glass, from the feet up. She returns to St Hauda’s Land, where she believes the glass first took hold, in the vain hope of finding a cure. Midas Crook is a young loner who has lived there all his life. When he meets Ida, something about her sad, defiant spirit pierces his emotional defences. As Midas helps Ida come to terms with her affliction, she gradually unpicks the knots of his heart and they begin to fall in love…
 
What they need most is time – and time is slipping away fast. Will they find a way to save her?
 
Ali Shawwas born in 1982 and grew up in a small town in Dorset. He graduated from Lancaster University with a first-class degree in English Literature and has since worked as a bookseller and at Oxford’s Bodleian Library. He is currently writing his second novel.
 
 
 
The Prize
 
The Prize was inaugurated in honour of publisher and literary agent Desmond Elliott, one of the most charismatic and successful men in this field, who died in August 2003. He stipulated that his estate should be invested in a charitable trust that would fund a literary award “to enrich the careers of new writers”. Worth £10,000 to the winner, the Prize is intended to support new writers and to celebrate their fiction.
 
The Desmond Elliott Prize 2010 panel of judges is chaired by Elizabeth Buchan who is joined by William Skidelsky, Literary Editor of The Observer, and leading independent bookseller James Daunt, founder of Daunt Books.
 
 
-ends-
 
Notes to editors
 
  • The Girl with Glass Feet by Ali Shaw is published by Atlantic Books priced £7.99
 
  • Ali Shaw may be available for interview. Please contact Caroline Brown at Colman Getty
 
  • The judges of the Desmond Elliott Prize are available for interview. Please contact Caroline Brown
 
·         Electronic Images of Ali Shaw and The Girl with Glass Feet, the judges and the Prize logo are available from Colman Getty
 
·         There were 10 books on the longlist and 3 books on the shortlist
 
  • Ali Shaw was joined on the shortlist by Maria Allen for her novel Before the Earthquake and Jacob Polley for his novel Talk of the Town
 
  • In recognition of being shortlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize 2010, the three authors will be given a year’s subscription to BookBrunch – www.bookbrunch.co.uk
 
  • The Desmond Elliott Charitable Trust is a registered charity. It is chaired by Dallas Manderson, Group Sales Director of the Orion Publishing Group. He is joined by Christine Berry,a partner in the charities group at Taylor Vinters, a Cambridge-based law firm, and Liz Thomson, Editor of BookBrunch. Both Dallas and Christine worked with Desmond Elliott at Arlington Books
 
 
 
 
For further information please contact
Caroline Brown or Mark Hutchinson
at Colman Getty
T: 020 7631 2666
 
 
 
 
 
 
About the judges
 
Elizabeth Buchan (Chair) began her career as a blurb writer for Penguin Books. She later became a fiction editor at Random House but decided after a couple of years that she should do what she wished to do: write. Her novels include Daughters of the Storm, Light of the Moon, Consider the Lily and the bestselling Revenge of the Middle Aged Woman, which has sold all over the world and has been made into a television film for CBS. Her latest novel is Separate Beds, to be published in 2010, a story of a family’s renegotiation of their relationships after the credit crunch has hit them.
 
Her short stories have appeared in various magazines and have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and she reviews for the Sunday Times. She had also chaired the Betty Trask prize and been a judge for the Whitbread (now Costa) book awards.
 
William Skidelsky is books editor of the Observer. Before that he was deputy editor of Prospect magazine and, before that, literary editor of the New Statesman. Aside from books, he writes about sport and food and he is the author of a guide book, Gourmet London.
 
James Daunt opened Daunt Books on Marylebone High Street, London in 1990. He has subsequently opened a further four bookshops in central London. He remains very much a shop floor bookseller. James has also judged The Ondatjee Prize and The Whitbread First Novel Award. He is aged 46 and is married with two daughters.
 
 
About Desmond Elliott
 
Desmond Elliott’s life reads like a page-turning rags to riches story. From humble beginnings in an Irish orphanage he came to England in 1947, at the age of 16 with just £2 in his pocket, to start his publishing career at Macmillan. After a colourful career in-house, Desmond set up as an agent and subsequently went on to establish his own publishing company, Arlington Books, in 1960.
 
This dedication, coupled with creative business sense, was key to the creation of a list of hugely successful blockbuster novelists; Jilly Cooper, Leslie Thomas and Penny Vincenzi, to name but a few. Respected and loved by his authors, in the words of Candida Lycett Green, Desmond was simply “magic”.
 
Charismatic, witty, and waspish, Elliott lived his life with verve. He drank only champagne, always crossed the Atlantic on Concorde and used Fortnum & Mason as his local shop. His office was in Mayfair and he had homes in London’s St. James’s and New York’s Park Avenue. Desmond Elliott died in August 2003 at the age of 73.


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