Wigfall wins windfall
Manchester graduate and former Literature Live guest Clare Wigfall has beaten 634 other fiction writers to win the BBC National Short Story Prize. The award, which comes with a £15,000 prize, is the most lucrative in the world for a single short story.
Clare scooped the prize for her story The Numbers, the eerie tale of a young woman living in the Outer Hebrides in the 1930s. Clare read from the story, complete with accent and dialect, during her event at the Centre in February - giving a highly convincing performance despite never having visited the Hebrides.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, where her win was announced, she said: "I'm totally amazed. It's really astonishing and a great honour to be given this prize, I never expected this to happen."
The BBC National Short Story Award, now in its third year, is an annual event aimed at re-establishing the importance of the British short story.
Broadcaster Martha Kearney, who chaired the judging panel, said: "It's exciting that a relatively unknown voice - in fact the youngest writer on our shortlist - has distinguished herself amongst some very well-known authors as a leading talent in the world of storytelling.
"Clare's evocation of superstition and frustrated lives on a remote Scottish island is an act of historical ventriloquism. She shows just what the short story can achieve, conjuring up a whole world in microcosm."
Clare's debut collection of short stories, The Loudest Sound and Nothing, was published by Faber last September to wide acclaim. Her win will mean that she can continue to write fiction full-time, from her current base in Berlin.
Click here to read more about Clare's Literature Live event in February 2008.