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Dylan Thomas Prize, Jaipur, News, Swansea University -

To celebrate 15 years of the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize, the Prize is announcing this year's longlist live from the Jaipur Literature Festival.     The event, supported by British Council Wales, will take place on Friday 24 January and will feature an incredible panel discussion featuring the first ever winner, Rachel Trezise and latest winner, Guy Gunaratne, along with Festival Director and jury member Namita Gokhale and the Prize’s Executive Officer Elaine Canning. On returning to the judging panel Jaipur Literature Festival Director Namita Gokhale said: “I am delighted to return to the jury of the inspirational Swansea University Dylan Thomas...

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On Sunday the Observer ran a feature titled 'Northern writers on why a north-specific prize is more important than ever' featuring the six writers that have been shortlisted for the Portico Prize, who are announcing the winner of the £10,000 award on the 23 January. Glen James Brown has been shortlisted for his debut novel Ironopolis, here's his interview from the piece: Glen James Brown was born in County Durham in 1982, studied English at Leeds Beckett University and gained an MA in creative writing at the University of Chichester, where he won the Kate Betts Memorial award. Ironopolis is his...

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Brando's Bride, interview, News, Sarah Broughton -

This week, for her WRITERS CHAT series, Sarah Gilligan talks to author Sarah Broughton about her recent release Brando's Bride. You say several times in the book that Anna Kashfi was “both of her time and one of a kind” and that she was “a part of history and yet also extinguished from it.” Was part of your aim in writing this book to bring her – and her story – back into the folds of history and also popular culture? Did you see her as one of the forgotten women of history? This is an area I’ve always been...

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Book Review, Poetry, Poetry in Translation -

And another great review! This time for Pomegranate Garden by Haydar Ergülen on World Literature Today: 'Ergülen has a broad poetic range. Pomegranate Garden features works from 1982 to 2019. Pomegranate Garden delights in prose poetry, symbolism, free verse, narrative, premodern classicism, and the occasional mystic spiritual. But arguably, Ergülen best succeeds at what Parker notes as his “down-to-earth concerns of humanity itself.” In his poem “Borrowed Like Sorrow” (2005), he writes, “Mornings are tough / much more so than poetry.” His quotidian commentary becomes profound in his elegy to the Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, written the year he was assassinated....

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