Monday, April 23, 2007

congrats to Julian Gough

Huge congratulations to Julian Gough, the winner of this year's National Short Story Prize with his story The Orphan and the Mob (which is still available on the BBC Afternoon Reading site, until tomorrow, I believe)! I laughed out loud listening to it - and that very rarely happens to me! You can read it in Prospect Magazine too.

I feel very honoured that Julian popped into my blog last week to correct some of my misconceptions about the shortlist. I had slammed it as being full of already-well-known writers, and I am very grateful to him for pointing out that he, in fact, has had only one novel published, in 2001, and, as he says,

one small literary novel published six years ago doesn't get you stopped in the street very often. Or, indeed, ever.

Read his comments about the competition process and what it was like to have his story cut by the BBC for broadcast here. Well done, Julian - more power to the short story - and don't spend all that £15,000 at once!

2 comments:

Jan said...

Thanks for this. Lots to take in.

Julian Gough said...

Thanks Titania,

I'm so glad it made you laugh aloud. That's my favourite kind of review.

I still haven't recovered from winning te prize. Each morning I wake up, and sort the dreams from the memories, and discover again that winning it is a memory, not a dream. A very nice way to wake up. May it happen to you.

Best of luck with the blog, and with all of your writing,

-Julian

www.juliangough.com