News | Monday, 23rd April 2018

Creative Writing Lecturer shortlisted for £10,000 Royal Society of Literature prize

Andrew Michael Hurley’s ‘Devil’s Day’ novel is up for the Encore Award

A Creative Writing Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University has been shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Encore Award 2018.

Andrew Michael Hurley is up against five other authors for the £10,000 prize with his book Devil’s Day, a novel about family, duty and landscape, set upon the atmospheric moors of Lancashire.

It follows on from his debut novel, The Loney, which won the Costa First Novel Award 2015, and went on to be named Debut of the Year and Overall Book of the Year at the British Book Industry Awards in May 2016.

Andrew Michael Hurley joined Manchester Writing School as Lecturer in Creative Writing (Fiction) in 2016.

He said: "It was a real surprise to be shortlisted for the Encore. A lot of attention is rightfully given to debut novels, so it’s great that second books, which are notoriously difficult to write, are recognised with this award."

Adam O'Riordan, Academic Director of the Manchester Writing School, added: "We're all so pleased for Andrew and absolutely delighted about this. For a university novelist to be recognised is very special, and Andrew serves as an example of the excellent quality and expertise we have across the Writing School."

Quality

The Royal Society of Literature is the national charity for the advancement of literature. It celebrates and nurtures all that is best in British literature, past and present.

The Encore Award was first presented in 1990 to celebrate the achievement of outstanding second novels. This year’s judges are critic, journalist and broadcaster Alex Clark – the chairman - alongside poet and children’s author Julia Copus and Ted Hodgkinson, Senior Programmer for Literature and Spoken Word at Southbank Centre.

The judges said they were “impressed and delighted by the sheer quality of the submissions - particularly their range of subject matter”. They were also impressed by the “writers’ willingness to innovate and to imagine new ways of telling stories.”

Immersive tale

Andrew’s gothic novel was praised by judge, Julia Copus.

She said: “There is an all-consuming sense of the nearness of evil in Devil’s Day. As schoolteacher John Pentecost returns with his wife, Kat, to his childhood home in the remote ‘Endlands’ farming country, he finds himself drawn back into the sinister rituals of an inward-looking community, and refuses to acknowledge his wife’s misgivings in a milieu that is utterly alien to her. The result is a powerfully immersive tale in the very best manner of modern English gothic.”

The winner will be announced on Wednesday May 9.