Creative Writing Alumni Successes

Diploma and Master's in Creative Writing students have chalked up a fair number of prizes and publications over the past months.

Diploma in Creative Writing alumna Elisabeth Gifford's first novel Secrets of the Sea House has been shortlisted for the Crown award, historical novel debut 2014. Her second novel, Return to Fourwinds, came out in September. Elisabeth describes it as 'a very English novel, set between the wars, and looking at the effects of keeping secrets. A lot of it is based in Oxford around some family history and was also written in Oxford during the diploma course.'

MSt in Creative Writing alumnus Patrick Toland has won a Templar Porfolio Award. His pamplet of poems was published in October 2014 with a launch at the Derwent Poetry Festival and reading at Keats House.

MSt alumnus Stephanie Scott's short story Pulau Brani (written while at Oxford) has won the Writers' Village International Short Fiction Award 2014 and £3000. It is published on the Writers' Village website.

MSt student Agnes Davis been been shortlisted for the Creative Medicine Unboxed Prize 2014, a single £10,000 prize for a creative work that explores the interface between art and medicine.

MSt student Kiran Millwood Hargrave has signed two-book deals with both Knopf Random House (USA), and Chicken House (UK and Europe) Her debut novel The Cartographer's Daughter will be published simultaneously in these territories in 2016, with a second title appearing in 2017.

MSt alumnus Sabyn Javeri's novel Nobody Killed Her will be published next May by Bloomsbury in the UK, USA and India.

MSt tutor Jane Draycott won the 2014 Open International Hippocrates prize

MSt student Alex Strnad won the International Jane Martin Poetry Prize, judged by John Fuller.

MSt tutor Roopa Farook's short story, We're in Heaven, has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize (from over 5000 entries).The judge was Andrew Miller, who recently won the Costa for PURE. This is her second Bridport shortlisting - the last one was for her poetry.

MSt course director Clare Morgan's short story Charity is anthologized in the Library of Wales (Parthian) 2-volume anthology STORY (ed. Dai Smith). This publication aims to put together the best stories from Wales in the last century and first decade of this century.

MSt alumni Pat Toland and Elizabeth Thompson were both shortlisted for the Forward Prize ) for their poems Drive and Four Types of Migraine.

Published 17 November 2014