Petina Gappah Up for €35,000 Award

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Thursday, 02 July 2009 16:47

Zimbabwean writer, Petina Gappah has been shortlisted for the 2009 Frank O'Connor Short Story Award. The €35,000 (£30,000) award is the richest short story prize in the world.

Below are the details of this update. The quotes are from the Award's website.

Looking to the Sky. Petina Gappah
(Picture: Reuters)

"The award at 35,000 euro is the richest prize in the world for the short story form and is given annually to an original collection of stories judged to be the best. Previous winners have included Haruki Murakami, Miranda July, Jhumpa Lahiri and Yiyun Li. The award is organised by the Munster Literature Centre with generous funding from Cork City Council. Notable names edged out for a position on this year's shortlist include Booker winner Kazuo Ishiguro, Orange Prize winner Chimanda Ngozi Adiche, veteran short story authors Ali Smith, Mary Gaitskill and James Lasdun and reviewers' darling Sana Krasikov. The winner will be announced in Cork on September 20th at the closing ceremony of the tenth Frank O'Connor International Short Story Festival which is the oldest annual short story festival in the world."

The shortlisted books are as follows:

1. An Elegy for Easterly by Petina Gappah published by Faber, London.

2. Singularity by Charlotte Grimshaw published by Vintage, New Zealand.

3. Ripples and other Stories by Shih-Li Kow published by Silverfish Books, Malaysia.

4. The Pleasant Light of Day by Philip O Ceallaigh Published by Penguin Ireland.

5. Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower Published by FSG New York and Granta UK

6. Love Begins in Winter by Simon Van Booy published by Harper Perennial New York.

For more details, go to the Award website.

According to the Guardian, four out of the shortlisted stories are by first-time writers. Our own (Zimbabwe's) Petina Gappah told the Guardian that "she had been 'going around with a rather demented grin on my face' ever since she heard that her debut collection, An Elegy for Easterly, was on the list"

"I still can't believe I am on the shortlist ahead of all those excellent writers," she said. "It is too bizarre. At this rate, I may just start to be believe that I actually know what I am doing!" she said.