WORD CHRISTCHURCH - MAN BOOKER CONTENDER ANNA SMAILL

SPOTLIGHT ON ...

MAN BOOKER CONTENDER ANNA SMAILL   We have hugely exciting news! New Zealand poet and novelist Anna Smaill, who is heading to Christchurch for WORD Christchurch's Shifting Points of View programme in the Christchurch Arts Festival, has just been long-listed for the Man Booker prize for her superb novel The Chimes. The novel is set in a dystopian future where music has replaced the written word, and people's memories are wiped every evening. It is written using exquisite language and tense plotting, and is a favourite in our office. Anna joins luminaries such as Marilynne Robinson, Anne Tyler and Anne Enright to compete for a place on the shortlist, and for the final prize of £50,000. Anna is only the fifth New Zealander to secure a place on the list, after Keri Hulme, Patricia Grace, Lloyd Jones and of course Eleanor Catton. We wish her very warm congratulations and look forward to welcoming her to the Imaginary Cities panel on 30 August.

Anna Smaill was born in Auckland in 1979. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from the IIML, and a PhD in contemporary American poetry from University College London. She is the author of a book of poetry, The Violinist in Spring, and her poems have been published in New Zealand and the United Kingdom. She has lived and worked in both Tokyo and London, and now lives in Wellington, with her husband, novelist Carl Shuker, and their daughter. The Chimes, her first novel, was published in 2015 to great international acclaim. The Independent called Anna “2015’s most impressive new novelist”. You can hear Anna interviewed by Kim Hill, and read an interview in The Independent.  And congratulations too from The Auckland Writers Festival: ANNA SMAILL'S THE CHIMES MAKES THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE LONGLIST Our warmest congratulations to NZ's Anna Smaill who has been selected for the Man Booker Prize longlist for her debut novel The Chimes which constructs a world ruled by a large musical instrument, and navigated via a musical language. Anna appeared at this year's Festival in a session with Bernard Beckett titled Memory Loss as well as our Life Beyond reading session. You can listen to Anna in Memory Loss online or via itunes. Congratulations also to 2008 Festival guest and 2007 Man Booker Prize winner Anne Enright who has also been longlisted for her novel The Green Road. View the full 2015 Man Booker Prize longlist.