Portico Prize for Literature

Following on from my post last week about the Scottish book awards from The Saltire Society, I have also discovered The Portico Prize for Literature, that is often dubbed the 'Northern Booker'.

The prize is for both fiction and non-fiction books which are based largely or wholly in the North of England. It is only awarded every two years, and books published over the last two years are eligible.

The award is presented by The Portico Library in Manchester, a members and researchers only library comprising mainly 19th century books. The awards are supported by a group of cultural organisations across the north of England: Manchester Metropolitan University, The Leeds Library, The Athenaeum Liverpool, The Newcastle Lit & Phil, The Armitt Museum, Chester University and The Manchester Children's Book Festival.

Separate awards for fiction and non-fiction have been awarded since 2006. Recent past winners of the fiction prize have been Val McDermid for The Grave Tattoo, Sallie Day for The Palace of Strange Girls and Sarah Hall for How To Paint A Dead Man. Non-fiction winners have been Andrew Biswell for The Real Life of Anthony Burgess, Catherine Bailey for Black Diamonds and Madeleine Bunting for The Plot: A Biography of an English Acre.

So here are the shortlists for 2012.

FICTION
She's Leaving Home by Joan Bakewell
The Doll Princess by Tom Benn
Ragnarok: The End of the Gods by A S Byatt
The Beautiful Indifference by Sarah Hall
The Hunger Trace by Edward Hogan
The Last Word by Mark Illis
Reality, Reality by Jackie Kay
The Retribution by Val McDermid
The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers
The Adult by Joe Stretch
Hungry, The Stars and Everything by Emma Jane Unsworth
The Visiting Angel by Paul Wilson
How the Trouble Started by Robert Williams

NON-FICTION
Walking Home by Simon Armitage
William Armstong: Magician of the North by Henrietta Heald
Nella Last in the 1950s by Robert and Patricia Malcolmson
Jack's Yak by Keith Richardson
Brief Lives: Elizabeth Gaskell by Alan Shelston
Strands by Jean Sprackland
The Man Who Couldn't Stop Drawling by Chris Wadsworth
Jews and Other Foreigners by Bill Williams
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson
Ralph Tailor's Summer: A Scrivener, his City and the Plague by Keith Wrightson

And the winners for 2012 were:

Sarah Hall (again!) for The Beautiful Indifference
and
Jean Sprackland for Strands

The only one of the shortlists I've read is the Simon Armitage, which is one of my favourite books of 2012. However, I've read a couple of Sarah Hall's previous novels (Haweswater and The Electric Michelangelo) both of which I really enjoyed.

2022 Shortlist

Ghosted: A Love Story by Jenn Ashworth
The Outsiders by James Corbett
The Family Tree by Sairish Hussain
Sea State by Tabitha Lasley
Toto Among the Murderers by Sally J. Morgan
Mayflies by Andrew O'Hagan

Judges: Poet Momtaza Mehri; arts and entertainment editor at The Daily Telegraph Anita Singh; broadcaster Melanie Sykes and the journalist, author, broadcaster and academic Gary Younge.

2022 Longlist

The Blind Light by Stuart Evers
Mrs England by Stacey Halls
Are We Home Yet? by Katy Massey
The Khan by Saima Mir
Male Tears by Benjamin Myers
The Private Joys of Nnenna Maloney by Okechukwu Nzelu
I Belong Here by Anita Sethi
Ghost Town: A Liverpool Shadowplay by Jeff Young
(+ short listed books)

2022 Winner: Toto Among the Murderers by Sally J Morgan