PEN/Ackerley Prize for Memoir 2011 – shortlist

The shortlist for this year’s PEN/Ackerley Prize for Memoir has been announced. Britain’s only literary prize dedicated to memoir and autobiography, given to a literary autobiography of outstanding merit, written by an author of British nationality and published in the United Kingdom in the previous year.

The winner will be announced at the English PEN Summer Party on Thursday 21 July.
The following shortlist of four books was announced on Tuesday 12 July:
Waking Up in Toytown by John Burnside

Vintage (272 pp)
ISBN: 0099507838

In the early 80s, after a decade of drug abuse and borderline mental illness, a man runs away to the suburbs, to live what he hopes will be a normal life. With the aid of his last remaining friends he finds a regular job – but he can’t seem to outrun his own demons and, before long, he is back where he started.

The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance by Edmund de Waal

Vintage (368 pp)
ISBN: 0099539551

Brand New Item, Fast Dispatch

My Father’s Fortune: A Life by Michael Frayn

Faber and Faber (255 pp)
ISBN: 0571270581

Tells the story of the author’s father, the quick-witted boy from a poor and struggling family, who overcame so many disadvantages and shouldered so many burdens to make a go of his life; who found happiness, had it snatched away from him in a single instant, and in the end, after many difficulties, perhaps found it again.

Paperback published 1 Sept 2011
Red Dust Road by Jackie Kay

Picador (304 pp)
ISBN: 0330451065

Jackie Kay’s compassionate, life-affirming and extraordinarily moving memoir

The Award was established in memory of Joe Randolph Ackerley (1896-1967), author and literary editor of (sadly defunct) The Listener magazine. When Ackerley died, his sister Nancy endowed the JR Ackerley Prize in his memory.
The PEN/Ackerley Prize website has a list of past winners of the prize back to its inception in 1982. English PEN also award the Hessell-Tiltman Prize for historical works of high literary merit