Shortlist announced for Gladstone’s Library Writers in Residence award which returns for 11th year

Gladstone’s Library has announced the shortlist for the 2022 Writers in Residence award.

Every year, the UK’s only residential library, situated in Hawarden, hosts four authors as part of this highly competitive and prestigious award.

Despite the submission period taking place against a backdrop of national and global uncertainty, the responses “were as varied and invigorating as in previous years. ”

The award, which is designed to support emerging and established novelists and poets working within a broad spread of literary genres, is now in its eleventh year.

It was originally launched in association with Damien Barr, author of You Will Be Safe Here (2019) and the creator and host of Literary Salon.

Every applicant is required to have published a book within the last three years and is asked to write a short piece of writing in which they discuss liberal values.

The 12 shortlisted writers for 2022 are:

• Sarah Watling, The Olivier Sisters
• Carys Bray, When the Lights Go Out
• Glen James Brown, Ironopolis
• Rosalind Hudis, Restorations
• Francesca Haig, The Cookbook of Common Prayer
• Rebecca Watts, Red Gloves
• Victoria Gosling, Before the Ruins
• Suji Kwok Kim, Notes from the North
• Amy Sackville, Painter to the King
• Alice Jolly, The Aspergers’ Dilemma
• Caoilinn Hughes, The Wild Laughter
• Guy Stagg, The Crossway

Winning authors will be offered a residency extending up to a month at Gladstone’s Library, which has provided quiet and comfortable spaces for writers and researchers for more than a century.

Previous winners include poets Katrina Naomi, (The Girl With the Cactus Handshake, Hooligans), Rowan Hisayo Buchanan (Harmless Like You), and Angela Topping (Grimm Rules), novelists Sarah Perry (The Essex Serpent, Essex Girls) and Jessie Burton (The Miniaturist), and nonfiction writers such as William Atkins (The Immeasurable World: A Desert Journey) and Richard Beard (The Day that Went Missing).

The judging panel for 2022 consists of Freddie Baveystock, Trustee of Gladstone’s Library and teacher at Harris Westminster Sixth Form, alongside previous Writer in Residence winners; journalist and non-fiction author Charlotte Higgins, award-winning poet Jonathan Edwards, and writer, reporter, and editor Cal Flyn.  

Peter Francis (pictured above) Warden of Gladstone’s Library, said:

“The past eighteen months has demonstrated how crucial time, space and support are in terms of fostering creativity.

“We know our residency programme is valued by our award applicants, and we are looking forward to offering that support once again.”

Judging will take place on October 4.

Writers in Residence was suspended in 2020 when the library closed during successive waves of Covid-19 lockdowns, but the winners of the 2020 award will be invited back to the library this year to take up their residencies.

The arrival of in September of 2020 winner Katie Hale, author of My Name is Monster, will mark the recommencement of the Writers in Residence scheme.