Recruited to celebrate the 16th anniversary of the Orange Prize for Fiction, the students, each currently 16 years old, were chosen to form a youth panel to shadow the official 2011 jury as part of the Orange Prize’s strategy to engage with younger readers.
Emma Donoghue commented: “Tickled pink to be the Orange Prize Youth Panel winner! When I wrote Room I was imagining a reader anything from 11 up, so I'm really chuffed it's finding so many young readers.”
The youth panel members are Emily Conibere, Sean Crocker and Rosie Foale from Bristol, and Jim Phillips, Martha Samano and Matthew Sparrow from West London.
The three girls and three boys read the six shortlisted books before meeting to decide their winner. The meeting was facilitated by Orange Prize project director, Harriet Hastings.
Youth panel member Martha Samano, said, “We all agreed Room stood out. For us, it was the most accessible and gripping, and a real page turner. It’s an horrific tale told with powerful innocence – we all felt it changes the way you view the world and makes you question your environment.”
Jim Phillips added, “Room is totally original. Cleverly narrated it combines tragedy with comedy, pace with depth. We all loved it and it’s the book we’d all recommend to our friends.”
The panel were selected from Patchway Community College in Bristol and Twyford Church of England High School in West London. They were chosen as schools already involved in Orange’s ongoing CSR programme.
Youth panel member Emily Conibere said, “Being part of this panel has introduced me to new sorts of books which I wouldn’t have chosen before. As a result I’ve widened my scope and will look at a greater range of literature from now on – I’ve really enjoyed discovering something new.”
Matthew Swallow said, “The experience has reminded me that while reading isn’t always the easiest, it’s worth it if you persevere.”
Jim Phillips added, “I wouldn’t have normally picked the books on this list – I’m a thriller fan – but it’s introduced me to a different style of literature and a completely different type of book. It’s actually been a much more rewarding reading experience. These books made me think more than the ‘face value fiction’ which I usually read.”
Kate Mosse, novelist and Honorary Director of the Orange Prize, comments: “This is the third year we’ve run a youth panel, as part of our commitment to promoting outstanding international fiction by women to younger audiences and to listening to their views. It’s fascinating to think that these six teenagers were born at the time the Orange Prize was founded and therefore represent a whole new generation of readers growing up being inspired by the Orange Prize books.”
About Emma Donoghue
Born in 1969, Emma Donoghue is an Irish writer who lives in Canada. Her fiction includes the bestselling novel Slammerkin and her novels have been translated into thirty-nine languages. Room, her seventh novel, was shortlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize, won the Irish Novel of the Year and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and most recently won in the Caribbean and Canada Best Book category of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. Donoghue has also been shortlisted for the Galaxy International Author of the Year and is winner of the TV Book Club. She lives in London, Ontario with Chris Roulston and their two children.
About Room, Picador
Jack is five and excited about his birthday. He lives with his Ma in Room, which has a locked door and a skylight, and measures eleven feet by eleven feet. He loves watching TV, and the cartoon characters he calls friends, but he knows that nothing he sees on screen is truly real - only him, Ma and the things in Room. Until the day Ma admits that there's a world outside...
The official winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction 2011 will be announced tomorrow evening at an awards ceremony in The Clore Ballroom of the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, central London.
The official Orange Prize for Fiction for Fiction judges for 2011 are: broadcaster, historian and author Bettany Hughes, (Chair), founder-director of Bloomsbury Publishing and Full Circle Editions Liz Calder, novelist Tracy Chevalier, actress and writer Helen Lederer, journalist and broadcaster Susanna Reid.
The Orange Prize for Fiction is the UK’s only annual book award for international fiction written by a woman. Now in its fourteenth year, the Prize celebrates excellence, originality and accessibility in women’s writing from throughout the world and is awarded for the best novel of the year written by a woman.
The 2011 winner will be presented with a cheque for £30,000 and a limited edition bronze statue known as ‘the Bessie’, created by artist Grizel Niven. Both are anonymously endowed.
Previous winners of the Orange Prize for Fiction are Helen Dunmore for A Spell of Winter (1996), Anne Michaels for Fugitive Pieces (1997), Carol Shields for Larry’s Party (1998), Suzanne Berne for A Crime in the Neighbourhood (1999), Linda Grant for When I Lived in Modern Times (2000), Kate Grenville for The Idea of Perfection (2001), Ann Patchett for Bel Canto (2002) Valerie Martin for Property (2003), Andrea Levy for Small Island (2004), Lionel Shriver for We Need to Talk about Kevin (2005), Zadie Smith for On Beauty (2006), Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for Half of a Yellow Sun (2007), Rose Tremain for The Road Home (2008), Marilynne Robinson for Home (2009) and Barbara Kingsolver for The Lacuna (2010).
For more information, go to www.orangeprize.co.uk.
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