Clare Harvey, University of Nottingham alumna and Nottingham Lakeside Arts employee, has just won the Exeter Novel Prize for her debut novel The Gunner Girl.
Clare graduated from UoN’s Creative Writing MA in 2012, and the book she began as her dissertation became the prize-winning novel, which is published by Simon & Schuster later this year.
“I’m so thrilled to win The Exeter Novel Prize,” says Clare. “But I have to say that this is testament to the quality of tuition on the UoN Creative Writing MA course. Thomas Legendre’s teaching definitely lifted my writing to a level that got me noticed by award judges, agents and publishers.”
Until recently Clare was working at Nottingham Lakeside Arts as project co-ordinator for the Lakeside Literacy Project, which enables UoN student volunteers from the School of English to devise and run creative writing workshops for local city schoolchildren in Lakeside’s Djanogly Art Gallery. Clare now writes full-time, working on a sequel to The Gunner Girl, but is keeping a link with Lakeside as an associate writer for the arts centre.
The Exeter Novel Prize is open to unrepresented and unpublished authors, but in the time between entering the competition and the prize being announced, Clare was lucky enough to find an agent and a publisher.
Photo shows Clare receiving her prize from Rt. Hon Ben Bradshaw MP for Exeter and former Secretary of State for Culture, Media & Sport.
Posted on Tuesday 31st March 2015