The 2010 longlist

Kay Sexton’s fiction has been chosen for over forty anthologies and broadcast on Radio 4. Her non-fiction life includes Minding My Peas and Cucumbers: Quirky Tales of Allotment Life, and The Allotment Diaries.

American writer Ron Rash is the author of the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Finalist and New York Times bestselling novel, Serena, in addition to five other prize-winning novels, One Foot In Eden, Saints At The River, The World Made Straight, The Cove and Above the Waterfall; four collections of poems; and six collections of stories, among them Chemistry And Other Stories, which was a finalist for the 2007 PEN/Faulkner Award. A recipient of the O. Henry prize, he teaches at Western Carolina University. In 2010 he won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award for Burning Bright.

Charles Mosley, who died in 2013, was a genealogist. He was editor-in-chief at Burke’s Peerage & Baronetage for over 20 years before returning to Debrett’s as editor-in-chief, where he had previously worked as an editor in the late 1970s. He was also an author, editor and compiler of 11 books.

Joe Dunthorne is a Welsh novelist, poet and journalist, who first made his name with his novel, Submarine (2008), which was made into the film, Submarine, in 2010. His second novel, Wild Abandon (2011), won the Society of Authors’ Encore award. A collection of his poems was published in 2010 in the Faber New Poets series.

Helen Simpson is the author of six short story collections – Four Bare Legs in a Bed (1990), Dear George (1995), Hey Yeah Right Get a Life (2000), Constitutional (2005) and In-Flight Entertainment (2010) and most recently Cockfosters (2015). She has received the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, the Somerset Maugham Award, the Hawthornden Prize and the E.M.Forster Award. She lives in London.

Adam Marek is an award-winning short story writer. He won the 2011 Arts Foundation Short Story Fellowship, and has been shortlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize. His stories have appeared on BBC Radio 4, and in many magazines and anthologies, including Prospect and The Sunday Times Magazine, and The Penguin Book of the British Short Story. His short story collections, The Stone Thrower and Instruction Manual for Swallowing, are published in the UK by Comma Press.

David Vann’s first book, Legend of a Suicide 2009), was the winner of the Grace Paley prize and a California book award, and has been on 25 best books of the year lists in America, Britain, Ireland, and Australia, including The Times Literary Supplement and The New York Times. His most recent novel, Aquarium, was published in 2015.

Simon Robson is a British actor, director and writer. Simon studied at Cambridge University and trained as an actor at RADA. He has worked extensively in the theatre and on television. His first play, The Ghost Train Tattoo, premiered at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester in 2001. Since then he has published a book of short stories, The Separate Heart, which was shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor Prize in 2007, and a novel, Catch.

American writer Sylvia Brownrigg is the author of five works of fiction, a book of short stories Ten Women Who Shook the World (1997), as well as The Metaphysical Tough (1998), Pages for You (2001), The Delivery Room (2006) and Morality Tale (2008) – all published by Picador. The Delivery Room won the 2009 Northern California book award in fiction, and Pages for You won a Lambda award.

Born in Auckland, New Zealand, CK Stead has published 12 novels, two collections of short stories, 15 collections of poems, six books of literary criticism and/or literary essays, and edited a number of books. He has won a number of awards, including the New Zealand book award for both poetry and fiction. He was awarded a CBE in 1985 for services to New Zealand literature, and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1995.

Gerard Woodward is the author of an acclaimed trilogy comprising: August(shortlisted for the 2001 Whitbread First Novel Award), I’ll Go to Bed at Noon (shortlisted for the 2004 Man Booker Prize) and A Curious Earth. He was born in London in 1961, and published several prize-winning collections of poetry before turning to fiction. His collection of poetry, We Were Pedestrians was shortlisted for the 2005 T. S. Eliot Prize. He is Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. Legoland, a collection of short stories, is published in April 2016.

Will Cohu was born in Yorkshire in 1964. His books include Urban Dog (2001) and Out of the Woods (2007). His memoir, The Wolf Pit, was published in 2012 and shortlisted for the PEN/Ackerley Prize and he published his first much-acclaimed first novel, Nothing But Grass, was published in 2015.

Jackie Kay was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1961 to a Scottish mother and a Nigerian father. The experience of being adopted by and growing up within a white family inspired her first collection of poetry, The Adoption Papers (1991), which won a Scottish Arts Council Book Award, the Saltire Society Scottish First Book of the Year Award and a commendation by the Forward Poetry Prize judges in 1992. Her latest books are Red Dust Road (2010), a memoir about meeting her Nigerian birth father,  and Fiere (2011), which was shortlisted for the 2011 Costa Poetry Award and the 2011 Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year Award.

Chris Paling was born in Derby and is the author of nine novels, After The Raid (1995), Deserters (1996), Morning All Day (1997), The Silent Sentry (1999), Newton’s Swing (2000), The Repentant Morning (2003), A Town By The Sea (2005), Minding (2007), which was shortlisted for the Mind Book of the Year, and Nimrod’s Shadow (2010).

AL Kennedy is the author of 17 books: 6 literary novels, 1 science fiction novel, 7 short story collections and 3 works of non-fiction. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She was twice included in the Granta Best of Young British Novelists list and has won the 2007 Costa Book Award and the Austrian State Prize for International Literature.

Poet and novelist John Burnside has published nine novels, several memoirs and 14 books of poetry. The Asylum Dance was awarded the Whitbread prize for poetry in 2001 and was shortlisted for both the T.S. Eliot prize and the Forward poetry prize for best collection. His other awards include the T. S. Eliot Prize for Black Cat Bone.

Nicholas Best is a British author of Anglo-Irish origin. His early books include Happy Valley: The Story of the English in Kenya and Where were you in Waterloo? – a satirical novel of army life. His latest book is Five Days that Shocked the World.

Rose Tremain, born in London in 1943, was one of only five women writers to be included in Granta’s original list of 20 Best of Young British Novelists in 1983. Her novels and short stories have been published worldwide in 27 countries and have won many prizes, including the Sunday Express book of the Year Award (for Restoration, also shortlisted for the Booker Prize); the Prix Femina Etranger, France (for Sacred Country); the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award (for Music & Silence) and the Orange Prize for Fiction 2008 (for The Road Home). Restoration was filmed in 1995 and a stage version was produced in 2009. Her new novel, The Gustav Sonata, is published in May 2016.

Simon Robson is a British actor, director and writer. Simon studied at Cambridge University and trained as an actor at RADA. He has worked extensively in the theatre and on television. His first play, The Ghost Train Tattoo, premiered at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester in 2001. Since then he has published a book of short stories, The Separate Heart, which was shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor Prize in 2007, and a novel, Catch.