The Desmond Elliott Prize, is an annual event, now in it’s third year and is awarded for the best first novel, written in English and published in the UK, with books from all fiction genres being considered.

The prize was created in memory of Desmond Elliott, literary agent and publisher,who died in 2003.

He stipulated that his estate should be invested in a charitable trust that would fund a literary award “to enrich the careers of new writers”, so the prize therefore also comes with a cash award of £10,000, to support the new writer and to celebrate their fiction work.

The prize for 2010, has recently been awarded to:

Ali Shaw, for his novel, ‘The Girl With Glass Feet’

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Synopsis:-

Strange things are happening on the remote and snowbound archipelago of St Hauda’s Land. Unusual winged creatures flit around icy bogland; albino animals hide themselves in the snow-glazed woods; jellyfish glow in the ocean’s depths… and Ida Maclaird is slowly turning into glass.

A mysterious and frightening metamorphosis has befallen Ida  – she is slowly turning into glass, from the feet up. She returns to St Hauda’s Land, where she believes the glass first took hold, in the vain hope of finding the one man who might just be able to cure her… [Read more...]