Press Release: Prizes and Awards

Portico Prize For Literature 2010 - Longlist Announced

The longlist of 21 books for the Portico Prize 2010 was announced today. Judges Dr Stella Butler, Ed Glinert and Val McDermid selected 10 fiction, 9 non-fiction and 2 poetry titles from the 103 volumes entered.

Nominees for the prize, which is the only book prize exclusively for books about, or set mainly in, the North of England, include Simon Armitage, Nicola Barker, Reginald Hill, Jacob Polley and Tristram Hunt.

Val McDermid said: "the longlist reflected those writers who understood the importance of place to underpin good fiction and this shone through with a great sense of vibrancy in Northern writing".
"The best fiction entries seemed to be set in small towns in Yorkshire and Cumbria and surprisingly there were few novels that captured the excitement of the big city", said Ed Glinert.

Stella Butler was impressed with the quality and production of the non-fiction books saying "some of the titles were a joy to look at and hold".

All the judges were in agreement that many of the books were clearly a labour of love and a credit to the authors. Writers wrote about subjects that really mattered to them and at times were not even aware of their audience so engrossed were they with their subject!

The 2010 shortlist will be announced on 5th October. The winners of the Portico Prize 2010 will be revealed on 18th November at a dinner at Manchester Town Hall.

The winners of both the fiction/poetry and non-fiction categories will receive £4,000 each as well as a specially bound edition of their book.

The full longlist is:

Fiction:
Simon Armitage – Seeing Stars (Faber & Faber, 2010)
Nicola Barker – Burley Cross Postbox Theft (Fourth Estate, 2010)
Tony Bianchi – Bumping (Alcemi, 2010)
Matt Haig – The Radleys (Canongate Books, 2010)

Sarah Hall – How to Paint a Dead Man (Faber & Faber, 2009)
Joanne Harris – BlueEyedBoy (Transworld Publishers, 2010)
Reginald Hill – Midnight Fugue (Hapercollins, 2009)
M.J. Hyland – This Is How (Canongate Books, 2009)
Jude Morgan – A Taste of Sorrow (Headline Publishing, 2009)
Jacob Polley – Talk of the Town (Picador, 2010)
Tony Williams – The Corner of Arundel Lane & Charles Street (Salt Publishing, 2009)
Steve Wood – The Angels of Mona Terrace (Priory Press Ltd, 2009)

Non-fiction:
Stephen Bull – A General Plague of Madness (Carnegie Publishing Ltd, 2009)
Madeleine Bunting – The Plot; a biography of my father's English acre (Granta Books 2009)
Malcolm Greenhalgh – The River Ribble (Carnegie Publishing Ltd, 2009)
David Hey – A History of Derbyshire (Carnegie Publishing Ltd, 2008)
Tristram Hunt – The Frock-Coated Communist (Penguin, 2009)
Angela V. John – Evelyn Sharpe; Rebel Woman, 1869-1955 (Manchester University Press, 2009)
Harry Pearson – Slipless in Settle; a slow turn around northern cricket (Little Brown Book Group, 2010)
Ian Thomson – The English Lakes (Bloomsbury, 2010)
Chris Wadsworth – Hercules and the Farmers Wife (Aurum Press, 2009)

http://www.theportico.org.uk/portprize.htm