Winner of the Mulcahy Conway Prize announced
Centre for New Writing students past and present gathered at Manchester Central Library on 12 November to hear readings from the three shortlisted writers for the Mulcahy Conway Award: Belle Crawford, Kamila Rymajdo and Xiena Saeed, all of whom recently completed the MA Creative Writing.
The prize, given by London based literary agency Mulcahy Conway Associates, is awarded annually to a graduate of the Centre's MA Creative Writing in fiction for the best novel-in-progress.
Belle Crawford read an excerpt from her novel-in-progress A Pearl in the Bay, Kamila Rymajdo from hers, Summer, and Xiena Saeed from hers, Fiyatoshi Road.
After the readings the agency's founding director Ivan Mulcahy announced that Xiena Saeed was the winner of the £1,000 prize.
"We were looking for the kind of fiction you can forget you're even reading, having that unique engaging quality that makes reading the manuscript feel like pleasure rather than business."
Fiyatoshi Road is set in Male, the capital island/city of the Maldives, which Xiena described as "a small, strange place crammed full of people who all know each other's names."
The novel explores the interlinked lives and histories of some of these people, who live on the same road.
Later she said she was thrilled to have won the award and had still "not managed to stop grinning in public."