Debut novel from Christie Watson joins Julian Barnes, Carol Ann Duffy and Claire Tomalin in contention for £30,000 award
The novels shortlisted for the 2011 Costa book awards.
An intensive care nurse at Great Ormond Street children's hospital in London will compete for one of the UK's biggest literary prizes after her debut novel was shortlisted in the Costa book awards.
Christie Watson, who has been a nurse for 18 years, is nominated in the first book category of a prize that unashamedly rewards what judges believe are the most "enjoyable" books of the year.
Twenty writers are nominated across five shortlists – novel, first novel, biography, poetry and children's book – including some strikingly big hitters such as Julian Barnes, Carol Ann Duffy and Claire Tomalin.
Watson worked her way up the nursing ladder to senior sister but always harboured literary ambitions. "I'd always wanted to write but I never really summoned up the courage," she said. "It was always in me."
The birth of her daughter prodded Watson into starting to write seriously. She secured a bursary for the creative writing course at the University of East Anglia and the result is her novel, Tiny Sunbirds Far Away, which tells the story of 12-year-old Nigerian girl Blessing who has to leave her comfortable life in Lagos to live in an impoverished compound in the Niger Delta.
It is, Watson admits, a long way from her upbringing in Stevenage, Hertfordshire but, because her partner is Nigerian, it is a country she now knows well. "I originally started writing it from the point of view of a white western oil worker and it was really rubbish," she said.
Also on the first novel shortlist are Patrick McGuinness, an Oxford University professor of French and comparative literature, for The Last Hundred Days, a book longlisted for the Man Booker prize; Irish writer Kevin Barry, for City of Bohane; and Kerry Young for Pao, a novel set in the criminal underworld of Kingston, Jamaica. Although Young, a former youth worker, now lives in Quorn, Leicestershire, she was born in Kingston to a Chinese father and a mother of Chinese-African heritage. In 1965, aged 10, she came to England with her mother. The novel, she said, is a gift to her father, who died in 1969. Of her shortlisting, Young said: "I don't think I'll believe it until I see it in print."
The novel category, by contrast, is full of experience, not least that of Barnes, who is shortlisted for The Sense of an Ending, which won the Man Booker prize last month. He is joined by John Burnside, whose collection of poetry Black Cat Bone won this year's Forward prize, for A Summer of Drowning; Andrew Miller for Pure; and Louisa Young for My Dear I Wanted To Tell You.
Full report at The Guardian.
And BBC report.
And The Bookseller.
Christie Watson, who has been a nurse for 18 years, is nominated in the first book category of a prize that unashamedly rewards what judges believe are the most "enjoyable" books of the year.
Twenty writers are nominated across five shortlists – novel, first novel, biography, poetry and children's book – including some strikingly big hitters such as Julian Barnes, Carol Ann Duffy and Claire Tomalin.
Watson worked her way up the nursing ladder to senior sister but always harboured literary ambitions. "I'd always wanted to write but I never really summoned up the courage," she said. "It was always in me."
The birth of her daughter prodded Watson into starting to write seriously. She secured a bursary for the creative writing course at the University of East Anglia and the result is her novel, Tiny Sunbirds Far Away, which tells the story of 12-year-old Nigerian girl Blessing who has to leave her comfortable life in Lagos to live in an impoverished compound in the Niger Delta.
It is, Watson admits, a long way from her upbringing in Stevenage, Hertfordshire but, because her partner is Nigerian, it is a country she now knows well. "I originally started writing it from the point of view of a white western oil worker and it was really rubbish," she said.
Also on the first novel shortlist are Patrick McGuinness, an Oxford University professor of French and comparative literature, for The Last Hundred Days, a book longlisted for the Man Booker prize; Irish writer Kevin Barry, for City of Bohane; and Kerry Young for Pao, a novel set in the criminal underworld of Kingston, Jamaica. Although Young, a former youth worker, now lives in Quorn, Leicestershire, she was born in Kingston to a Chinese father and a mother of Chinese-African heritage. In 1965, aged 10, she came to England with her mother. The novel, she said, is a gift to her father, who died in 1969. Of her shortlisting, Young said: "I don't think I'll believe it until I see it in print."
The novel category, by contrast, is full of experience, not least that of Barnes, who is shortlisted for The Sense of an Ending, which won the Man Booker prize last month. He is joined by John Burnside, whose collection of poetry Black Cat Bone won this year's Forward prize, for A Summer of Drowning; Andrew Miller for Pure; and Louisa Young for My Dear I Wanted To Tell You.
Full report at The Guardian.
And BBC report.
And The Bookseller.
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