Excitement! Orange!

The shortlist for the Orange Award for New Writers was announced today, and with it the old debate starts up amongst some as to whether or not a women only prize is needed/relevant/okay.

I sometimes feel like saying, well, yes, it is indeed needed, because the whole world seems to still take men more seriously than women. But then I get sucked into a tedious bout of discussion about the details, and I can't be bothered right now. Besides which I have just read a very much more reasonable post about that subject at Eve's Alexandria so I think I'll ask you to read that instead.

Much more exciting to me than the 3 authors shortlisted is that the judges chose to commend two new writers. And one of them is the super writer (and friend of this blog) Tania Hershman

Chair of judges Mishal Husain said "We were deeply impressed by the tremendous quality of this year's new writers, it was a very competitive field and therefore an excruciating process to choose just three of the 80 books we read... We would also like to commend two other authors, Tania Hershman and CE Morgan, whose work stood out for its remarkable quality. We look forward to seeing more of their writing in the future."
Tania also gets a mention at the BBC.

Wheeeeee! Warm and hearty congratulations Tania.

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