You are viewing your 1 free article this month. Login to read more articles.
Julia Blackburn has won the £1,000 PEN/Ackerley Prize for her memoir The Three of Us (Cape).
She beat fellow Cape author Julian Barnes’ Nothing to be Frightened Of, plus Susie Boyt’s My Judy Garland Life (Virago), Cold Cream by Ferdinand Mount (Bloomsbury) and Sathnam Sanghera'a The Boy with the Topknot (originally published as If You Don’t Know Me By Now) (Penguin).
The PEN/Ackerley prize for memoir and autobiography was set up in the memory of Joe Randolph Ackerley, author and editor of The Listener. It rewards "a literary autobiography of excellence, written by an author of British nationality and published during the preceding year, for which it is felt that J R Ackerley would have expressed enthusiasm".
The awards ceremony, which included a discussion by previous winners Diana Athill, Dan Jacobson and Miranda Seymour, took place last night (13th July) at Foyles bookshop, Charing Cross Road, London.