The Orange Prize for Fiction 2009

Another year and another Orange Prize for Fiction longlist, but my what a diverse and fascinating one which mirrors the great panel of judges for this year’s shop window on the very best of writing by women.

Chaired by Fi Glover, the four judges Bidisha, Sarah Churchwell, Kira Cochrane and Martha Lane-Fox have done the prize proud with 20 works by authors that include a Nobel Laureate, a 63-year-old newcomer and the ever-fascinating, eminently readable Kamila Shamsie. In Dubai recently I was chatting with the prize’s co-founder Kate Mosse (LibraDoodle passim) who told me that a nicer panel of literary judges it would be harder to find and that her hopes for a great list were high.

You can read the full list and details of each of the books here but my first impression is that the range of styles, ages and modes of writing contained within this year’s list really cuts to the heart of what the Orange prize, now in its second decade, was set up for. It seems odd now to think that there was a time when the considerable talent and achievement of women’s critical views and writing was overlooked by other prizes and the Orange has been at the forefront of changing this. So much so that they seem to have dropped the "for Women's Fiction" part of the prize's title which I'm sure was there in the early days. Progress indeed. If you want to really know what women are thinking about, writing about and what is exercising them then you could do far worse than read the entirety of the longlist. I will and I sincerely hope you will too, as this year it includes works from Australia, the USA, Ireland, Malaysia, Pakistan and Canada as well as the UK possibly making it the most international longlist that the Orange has yet fielded.

Fi Glover has said that “all the books on the long list are there because each one, in its own way, is terrific in its ambition, quality and simple ability to entertain.” Hurrah to that, for many of the authors on the list are some of the best storytellers of our time, irrespective of gender.

I don’t envy the panel the next phase; how the hell they pick one winner from such a brilliant field is beyond me, but I congratulate them on a superbly rich showing so far and wish them luck for the next stage. I hope that the niceness that Kate Mosse mentioned endures!

Yours,

LibraDoodle

Fun and Festivals

A week that got off to a glorious start, ended on a rising crescendo of excitement. An evening spent in Dulwich with some friends I’d not seen for many months, to whit a deputy literary editor, a writer for Private Eye currently reading Law and a film maker recently returned from Washington DC where he was starting a documentary on the 1^st 100 days of the Obama presidency, became a giggle-fest in which subjects as diverse as the Popham Little Chef - now flying under the Heston Blumenthal banner and thus boasting Michelin stars on the inside and Michelin tyres on the outside – to the credit crunch culling that stalks the newspaper industry were the hot topics. The latter subject proved to be devoid of any humorous potential despite our best efforts. Bless them for dragging me out of Mortlake, or Deathpuddle as I rather meanly call it when the mood takes me, and for treating me to fine food, wine and company.

The next stop on the LibraDoodle agenda was a meeting in the glamorous surroundings of One Alfred Place to discuss the first-ever literary festival in Dubai. The Emirates Airline International Festival of Literature takes place from Thursday the 26^th February to Saturday the 28^th and promises to be really rather good. It seems that, as the full title of the festival is too long to be comfortably repeated in conversation, the preferred diminutive is a pronunciation of its acronym, EAIFL, or ‘Eiffel’, not the ‘Dubai Festival’ which I blotted my copybook a number of times by mentioning. You may wish to take note.

The organisers have done a sterling job and have attracted a stellar list of authors to appeal to all tastes. I’m looking forward to sharing a stage with Frank McCourt, Paul Torday, Andrei Kurkov, Kate Mosse and Louis de Bernieres, mercifully not all at the same time although the thought is entertaining me. Margaret Atwood, Anne Fine, Anita Nair, Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie, Ran Fiennes and Karin Slaughter will also be there as will others too numerous to mention. The programme is a good blend of western and Arabic authors and it will be fascinating to see how audiences respond. Should you find yourself in the area, I urge you to come along. The sponsor, being an airline, is issuing boarding cards now, so buckle up, stow your tables and settle back for some fascinating flights of fact and fiction.

My appointment with destiny, in the guise of the artistic director interview, draws ever closer and not even the snow will keep me from it. If I have to take to dognapping and sled my way there on a tea-tray, so I will.

Finally, The Lady magazine is currently undergoing something of an update and will soon be hitting your newsstand in its very lovely new form. It is a venerable institution, being England’s oldest magazine for women and in continuous publication since 1865, and I mention it as they have kindly published a couple of pieces of mine, one on the Hay-on-Wye festival and an interview with Germaine Greer. You may wish to take a look.

And there you have it, absentminded scribblings pertaining to books. I do try to do what it says on the title. Sometimes.

Yours,

LibraDoodle

News, views and interviews.

January 12^th 2009

Well it’s been a week since I tendered my application for the artistic director post for a literary festival and so far nothing heard. Not a surprise as I assume that they’ve been inundated with hopefuls. I certainly hope so, it’s a good festival and it deserves the luxury of selecting from a wide range of applicants.

Extended unemployment plays havoc with one’s self-confidence and I’m in a strange gloaming, nervous that I won’t be called for an interview and yet more so that I might. It’s been a good few years since I’ve had to formally apply for a job and to be honest I worry that I’ve lost the skill, if I ever had it. It’s also a very long time since I had to attend a job interview so if any of you have current tips do let me know. Perhaps you’ll also keep your fingers crossed for me as I really want this job, would relish the challenge and believe that I could be of benefit to the festival.

Silence in that particular area can be set against an unexpected invitation from another for an altogether different sort of interview. I’ve received an email from a production assistant at BBC Radio 4 inviting me to be a guest on “A Good Read”.  It’s a programme I listen to and enjoy greatly and Kate Mosse, the hugely successful author of Labyrinth and Sepulchre, is hosting this season’s run. Actually I can’t quite believe that I’ve been invited, it’s such an honour.

I know Kate well and admire her enormously having interviewed her for radio on a number of occasions, both in her authorial capacity and also as the co-founder and honorary director of the Orange Prize for Fiction that has done so much for fiction by women from around the world. I feel strangely uncomfortable stating that line ‘fiction by women’, to me it seems so redundant these days, but that’s what the prize was set up for and with a roster of winners which includes Valerie Martin, Ann Patchett, Zadie Smith, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Rose Tremain to name but a selection, it has really achieved what it set out to do and is very much a force for good. Perhaps one day, when I’ve grown up, I’ll get to be a male judge if they ever have such a thing. (I’m forty-six years old as I write that line, there’s time aplenty!)

It will be odd to be on the other side of the desk, I’m not at all sure that my experience as a broadcast interviewer will make me a good interviewee. There’s plenty of evidence to suggest not. Still, off I will go, proudly to Broadcasting House on the 27^th of this month to discuss my views on my chosen ‘good read’ and those of Kate Mosse and the other  - as yet unknown – guest.

What’s my choice? You’ll have to wait and see. A couple of my first thoughts were covered by earlier guests so while choosing a shortlist of three was relatively easy, the process of deciding on one is proving engagingly tough. I’m veering toward the small but perfectly formed so it may not be a full-blown, pocket-bursting, brick of a novel. It will be a damn good read though, that I promise.

So there we have it, a former interviewer turned interviewee now waiting for one interview while being interviewed in another interview by a former interviewee turned interviewer. Enjoy the views.

 Yours,

LibraDoodle