The Bookseller.com

4th July 2008

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Orange new writers trio revealed

08.04.08 Jenna Harris

Lauren Liebenberg, Joanna Kavenna and Lauren Groff have made it onto this year's Orange Broadband Award for New Writers, nominated for their début novels The Voluptuous Delights
of Peanut Butter and Jam (Virago), Inglorious (Faber) and The Monsters of Templeton (Heinemann) respectively.

Chair of judges Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, praised the quality of work produced by new writers. "There were so many worthy contenders for our shortlist that it was a worthy challenge to settle on a final three," she said. She added that the shortlist is "truly ambitious in scope" and reflects the prize's "international nature".

American writer Groff has had work featured in US publications including Ploughshares and The Atlantic Monthly, while British nominee Kavenna, who wrote her first book at 13, has had a text called The Ice Museum published. Liebenberg grew up in what was Rhodesia and set her novel, about sisters whose idyllic lives are disrupted, there.

The winner, who will be announced on 4th June at the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction awards ceremony at the Royal Festival Hall in London, receives a £10,000 bursary funded by Arts Council England.

Awards organisers also announced that Arts Council England has committed to a further £30,000 in bursary money for the next three years.

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