Press release: embargoed until 00.00 Tuesday 21 May 2019

Longlist announced for Gordon Burn Prize 2019

The 12-strong longlist for the Gordon Burn Prize 2019 is announced today (Tuesday 21 May).

Now in its seventh year, the literary prize has become known for identifying some of the boldest and most exciting new fiction and non-fiction published each year. A place on the longlist is recognition of work that stands out in the scale of its endeavour, often challenging readers’ expectations or pushing perceived boundaries of genre, sensibility or even the role of literature itself.

The Gordon Burn Prize was founded in 2012 and is run in partnership by the Gordon Burn Trust, New Writing North, Faber & Faber and Durham Book Festival. The prize seeks to celebrate those who follow in the footsteps of Gordon Burn, whose work includes the novels Fullalove and Born Yesterday: The News as a Novel and non-fiction Happy Like Murderers: The Story of Fred and Rosemary West, Best and Edwards: Football, Fame and Oblivion and Sex & Violence, Death & Silence: Encounters with Recent Art.

In 2018, the prize was won by Jesse Ball, a Chicago-based writer whose novel Census was inspired by the author’s late brother, Abram. Previous winners have included Denise Mina’s true crime novel The Long Drop (2017); David Szalay’s linked collection of short stories, All That Man Is (2016); and In Plain Sight: The Life and Lies of Jimmy Savile by Dan Davies (2015).

The prize is open to works in English published between 1 July 2018 and 1 July 2019, by writers of any nationality or descent who are resident in the United Kingdom, Ireland or the United States of America.

The longlist for the Gordon Burn Prize 2019 is:

Chamber Music: Enter the Wu-Tang Clan (in 36 Pieces), Will Ashon (Granta)

For The Good Times, David Keenan (Faber)

Ghost Wall, Sarah Moss (Granta)

Girl, Woman, Other, Bernadine Evaristo (Hamish Hamilton)

Heads of the Colored People, Naffissa Thompson-Spires (Chatto)

Heart Berries, Terese Marie Mailhot (Bloomsbury)

Lanny, Max Porter (Faber)

Lowborn, Kerry Hudson (Vintage)

Sweet Home, Wendy Erskine (Stinging Fly)

The Silence of the Girls, Pat Barker (Hamish Hamilton)

The Vogue, Eoin McNamee (Faber)

This Brutal House, Niven Govinden (Dialogue)

The judges for the Gordon Burn Prize 2019 are the author AA Dhand, artist Gary Hume, broadcaster and journalist Miranda Sawyer and musician Rachel Unthank. The shortlist will be announced on 17 July and the prize itself will be awarded at Durham Town Hall at the Durham Book Festival, a Durham County Council festival, on Thursday 10 October 2019.

Carol Gorner, on behalf of the Gordon Burn Trust, said: ‘2019 marks ten years since the death of Gordon Burn. The vitality and variety of the longlist for the prize set up in his name is a reflection of the continuing creativity that the prize encourages and rewards.’

Claire Malcolm, chief executive of New Writing North, said: ‘One of the wonderful things about the Gordon Burn Prize is the way it highlights such a diverse range of excellent books, always including some authors and titles that are new to me. Increasingly, this is the longlist that informs my own reading choices and I hope readers enjoy discovering these books as much as we have.’

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For all media enquiries, including high res images and interview requests, please contact Laura Fraine, Senior Marketing and Communications Manager, New Writing North laurafraine@newwritingnorth.com 0191 204 8850

NOTES TO EDITORS

Previous winners of the Gordon Burn Prize

2018 Census, Jesse Ball 2017 The Long Drop, Denise Mina2016 All That Man Is, David Szalay2015 In Plain Sight: The Life and Lies of Jimmy Savile, Dan Davies 2014 The Wake, Paul Kingsnorth 2013 Pig Iron, Benjamin Myers

Author biographies

Will Ashon is the author of Strange Labyrinth: Outlaws, Poets, Mystics, Murderers and a Coward in London’s Great Forest (Granta, 2017) and two novels. He previously ran Big Dada Recordings, where his artists included Roots Manuva, MF DOOM, Wiley and Diplo.

David Keenan grew up in Airdrie in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He is the author of England’s Hidden Reverse and a senior critic at The Wire. His debut novel, This Is Memorial Device, was shortlisted for the Gordon Burn and Collyer Bristow Prizes, and was a Book of the Month for Waterstones, Rough Trade and Caught by the River.

Sarah Moss was educated at Oxford University and is currently an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Warwick. She is the author of the novels Cold Earth, Night Waking, which was selected for the Fiction Uncovered Award in 2011, Bodies of Light, Signs for Lost Children, The Tidal Zone and Ghost Wall; and the co-author of Chocolate: A Global History. She spent 2009-10 as a visiting lecturer at the University of Iceland, and wrote an account of her time there in Names for the Sea: Strangers in Iceland (Granta 2012), which was shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize 2013.

Bernardine Evaristo is the Anglo-Nigerian award-winning author of seven books of fiction and verse fiction that explore aspects of the African diaspora: past, present, real, imagined. Her writing also spans short fiction, reviews, essays, drama and writing for BBC radio. She is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University London and Vice Chair of the Royal Society of Literature. As a

literary activist for inclusion, Bernardine Evaristo has founded several successful initiatives including Theatre of Black Women (1982-86), Spread the Word writer development agency (1995-present); The Complete Works mentoring scheme for poets of colour (2007-17) and the Brunel International African Poetry Prize (2012 - ongoing).

Nafissa Thompson-Spires earned a PhD in English from Vanderbilt University and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Illinois. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The White Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly, StoryQuarterly, Lunch Ticket and The Feminist Wire, among other publications. She is a 2016 participant of the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, a 2017 Tin House workshopee, and a 2017 Sewanee Writers Conference Stanley Elkin Scholar. Born in San Diego, California, she now lives in Illinois with her husband.

Terese Marie Mailhot graduated from the Institute of American Indian Arts with an MFA in fiction. Heart Berries, her first book, was shortlisted for the 2018 Governor General's Literary Award for Nonfiction. She teaches creative writing at Purdue University and resides in West Lafayette, Indiana.

Max Porter's first novel, Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, won the Sunday Times/Peters, Fraser + Dunlop Young Writer of the Year, the International Dylan Thomas Prize, the Europese Literatuurprijs and the BAMB Readers' Award, and was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Goldsmiths Prize. It has been translated into twenty-seven languages. Max lives in Bath with his family.

Kerry Hudson was born in Aberdeen. Her first novel, Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-cream Float Before He Stole My Ma, won the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust First Book Award and was shortlisted for an array of prizes including the Guardian First Book Award and the Sky Arts Awards. Thirst, her second novel, won the prestigious prix Femina étranger. Lowborn is her first work of non-fiction, and her journey has led to a highly successful column for The Pool. She currently lives in Liverpool.

Wendy Erskine lives in Belfast. Her work has been published in The Stinging Fly, Stinging Fly Stories and Female Lines: New Writing by Women from Northern Ireland (New Island Books) and is forthcoming in Being Various: New Irish Short Stories (Faber and Faber), Winter Papers and on BBC Radio 4. Sweet Home is her first collection.

Pat Barker was born in Yorkshire and began her literary career in her forties, when she took a short writing course taught by Angela Carter. Encouraged by Carter to continue writing and exploring the lives of working class women, she sent her fiction out to publishers. Thirty-five years later, she has published fifteen novels, including her masterful Regeneration Trilogy, been made a CBE for services to literature, and won awards including the Guardian Fiction Prize and the UK's highest literary honour, the Booker Prize. She lives in Durham and her latest novel is The Silence of the Girls.

Eoin McNamee's novels include Resurrection Man, later made into a film, The Blue Tango, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize; Orchid Blue, described by John Burnside in the Guardian as 'not only a political novel of the highest order but also that rare phenomenon, a genuinely tragic work of art,' and Blue is the Night, which won the 2015 Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award. He lives in Sligo.

Niven Govinden is the author of four previous novels, most recently All The Days And Nights which was longlisted for the Folio Prize and shortlisted for the Green Carnation Prize. His second novel Graffiti My Soul is about to go into film production. His third novel Black Bread White Beer won the 2013 Fiction Uncovered Prize. He was a judge for the 2017 4th Estate/Guardian B4ME Prize.