18th July, 2012

Patrick McGuinness wins Wales Book of the Year 2012

Patrick McGuinness’s debut novel The Last Hundred Days has won the 2012 Wales Book of the Year award (English-language).
Patrick was shortlisted along side two other writers, Robert Minhinnick (Seren) with his collection of short stories The Keys of Babylon and Joe Dunthorne Wild Abandon (Penguin).
The Last Hundred Days shows a city struggling to survive an intense moment in its history. Set during Ceausescu’s last hundred days in power, Patrick McGuinness’s accomplished debut novel explores a world of danger, repression and corruption.
Welsh-language Book of the Year winner was Jon Gower with his novel Y Storiwr (The Story Teller).
Categories in poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction were introduced for the first time this year.
Three titles were short listed in each category in both Welsh and English.
Best creative non-fiction winner was Richard Gwyn with The Vagabond’s Breakfast, whilst Gwyneth Lewis won the Roland Mathias poetry award.
Philip Cross, a former Book of the Year winner, topped the people’s choice category with his book of poetry Deep Field.
Lleucu Siencyn, the chief executive of Literature Wales, which stages the event, said it had been nice to reward a wider range of authors this year due to the introduction of the different categories.
“I’d like to congratulate all the other authors too,” she said.
“Reaching the shortlist is quite an achievement, and the excellent volumes on the list reflects the high standard in the world of Welsh publishing today.”