Thursday 19 March 2015

Lynne Allan, Chair of the Portico Library, writes:

Im delighted to be heralding the launch of the Portico Prize blog with the announcement of the call out to publishers for entries to this years Portico Prize for Literature.
This years prizes, of £10,000 each for the winners of the fiction and non-fiction categories, will be awarded at a gala dinner in Manchester in November 2015. The event will be hosted by Val McDermid, one of the biggest names in crime writing, a previous winner of the Portico Prize for Fiction, and one of the Porticos patrons. Watch this space for details of the date and venue!

The prize is generously funded by the Zochonis Charitable Trust, Arts Council England and the Portico Library and is open to books published between 1st August 2012 and 31st July 2015, that are of a good literary standard, of general interest, and set wholly or mainly in Northern England.

Were hard at work signing up an array of esteemed judges, and will announce the judging panel early in April.

Previous winners of the Portico Prize, which this year celebrates its thirtieth anniversary, include Sarah Hall (The Beautiful Indifference), Anthony Burgess (Any Old Iron), Jean Sprackland (Strands: A Year of Discoveries on the Beach), and Jenny Uglow (Elizabeth Gaskell, A Habit of Stories). I’m looking forward to reading a similar array of talent this time around.

For information about the Portico Prize, contact admin@theportico.co.uk