Two Bath Spa University Creative Writing graduates have been shortlisted in this year’s Costa Book Awards.
Creating Writing graduates Nathan Filer and Evie Wyld have been shortlisted for the 2013 Costa First Novel Award and the 2013 Costa Novel Award respectively.
Nathan Filer graduated from Bath Spa in 2010 with an MA in Creative Writing and was the runner up in the 2011 Pageturner Prize for his novel The Shock of the Fall which was published in May of this year.
Nathan is a writer and registered mental health nurse. He has worked as a researcher in the academic unit of psychiatry at the University of Bristol, and on in-patient psychiatric wards.
His stand-up poetry has been a regular fixture at festivals and spoken-word events across the UK, and has been broadcast on BBC 3 television and Radio 4, 7 and 5 Live. He is also a BBC Best New Filmmaker.
Evie Wyld graduated from Bath Spa in 2002 having studied creative writing as part of a BA Creative Arts Course. She is the author of one previous novel, After the Fire, A Still Small Voice, which was shortlisted for the Impac Prize, the Orange Award for New Writers and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and awarded the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 2009.
In 2011, she was named by the BBC as one of the twelve best new British novelists and in 2013, she was named as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists. She lives in Peckham, London, where she runs the Review Bookshop.
Commenting on the continued success of Bath Spa’s Creative Writing graduates, Dean of the School of Humanities and Cultural Industries, Professor Steve May said: “Sometimes writers pretend not to care about awards and prizes, but nominations like these reflect recognition within the literary world, and are a sign of just how pervasive and ground-breaking our graduates are becoming in that world.”
The Costa Book Awards is the only major UK book prize that is open solely to authors resident in the UK and Ireland and also, uniquely, recognises the most enjoyable books across five categories – First Novel, Novel, Biography, Poetry and Children’s Book – published in the last year.
This year’s Costa Book Awards attracted 617 entries – the highest number of entries ever received in one year. Judges on this year’s panels (three per category) included broadcaster and journalist Paul Ross; broadcaster and author Clemency Burton-Hill; poet and journalist Olivia Cole; author and former Channel 4 News culture editor, Matthew Cain, author, columnist and scriptwriter Emma Kennedy and writers, John Burnside, Anne de Courcy and Fanny Blake as well as author and Bath Spa University Professor of Fiction, Gerard Woodward.
Winners in the five categories, who each receive £5,000, will be announced on Monday 6th January 2014. The overall winner of the Costa Book of the Year 2013 will receive £30,000 and will be selected and announced at the Costa Book Awards ceremony in central London on Tuesday 28th January 2014.
The Creative Writing course at Bath Spa has been running for over 20 years. During that time it has become one of the most successful and popular in the UK. Course tutors are themselves respected writers and their links with the publishing industry are invaluable to graduates.