Michaelmas Creative Writing alumni update



Diploma and Master's students in Creative Writing have scored successes in recent 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.' See her website, www.elisabethgifford.com for more information.

MSt alumnus Patrick Toland has won the Templar Porfolio Award. They will publish his pamplet of poems 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 here: www.writers-village.org/winners-2014-1.php

MSt student Agnes Davis been been shortlisted for the Medicine Unboxed Creative Prize 2014, a single £10,000 prize for a creative work that explores the interface between art and medicine. For more information see https://plus.google.com/+medicineunboxed/posts/1AALsXAMoAG?cfem=1.

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 Farooki'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 with their poems Drive and Four Types of Migraine.

Published 20 November 2014