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Call for Entries for The Desmond Elliott Prize 2012

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Entry forms are downloadable at the

Submissions Area.

Entries are invited for The Desmond Elliott Prize which celebrates its fifth anniversary in 2012.   The Prize has already established itself as the leading prize for new fiction, written and talked about across the publishing world. Previous winners include Ali Shaw, whose next novel will be published in January 2012, Edward Hogan, who second novel was published earlier this year, and Anjali Joseph, winner of the 2011 Prize with Saraswati Park. 

The 2012 panel of three judges, an independent panel appointed by the trustees, will be later this year.   They will be looking for a novel of depth and breadth with a compelling narrative.   The work should be vividly written and confidently realised and should contain original and arresting characters.  Books from all fiction genres will be considered.  

Worth £10,000 to the winner, the Prize is intended to support new writers and to celebrate their fiction. It was created in memory of the charismatic publisher and literary agent, Desmond Elliott, who died in August 2003.  He stipulated that his estate should be invested in a charitable trust that would fund a literary award “to enrich the careers of new writers”. 

First novels published between 1 April 2011 and 31 March 2012 will be considered. A longlist of ten titles will be announced in March 2012 followed by a shortlist of three books in May. The winner will be announced in late June at an awards ceremony at Fortnum & Mason.   

The 2011 winner was Anjali Joseph for her novel, Saraswati Park (Fourth Estate). The 2010 winner was The Girl with Glass Feet by Ali Shaw (Atlantic Books); Edward Hogan won in 2009 for his first novel Blackmoor (Simon & Schuster) and Nikita Lalwani won the inaugural prize in 2008 for her novel Gifted (Penguin Books). 

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• The Desmond Elliott Charitable Trust is a registered charity. It is chaired by Dallas Manderson, Group Sales Director of the Orion Publishing Group. He is joined by Christine Berry, a partner in the charities group at Taylor Vinters, a Cambridge-based law firm, and Liz Thomson, Editor of BookBrunch. Both Dallas and Christine worked with Desmond Elliott at Arlington Books 

• The Desmond Elliot Prize is administered by Emma Manderson (ema.manderson@googlemail.com) 

• Entry forms and further information are available at www.desmondelliottprize.com  

• The deadline for submissions is Friday 25 November 2011 

• A longlist of ten books will be selected in March 2012.  A shortlist of three titles, chosen by the panel of three judges, will be announced in May. The fifth Desmond Elliott Prize will be awarded in June. United Kingdom and Irish publishers may enter up to two full-length novels per imprint by authors whose permanent place of residence is in the UK or Ireland, with scheduled publication dates between 1 April 2011 and 31 March 2012. 

• Logos and further information are available from Colman Getty 

For further information please contact

Alice Moss or Liz Sich at Colman Getty

About Desmond Elliott 

Desmond Elliott’s life reads like a page-turning rags–to-riches story. From humble beginnings in an Irish orphanage he came to England in 1947 at the age of 16 with just £2 in his pocket, to start his publishing career at Macmillan. Thereafter Desmond set up as an agent and subsequently went on to establish his own publishing company, Arlington Books, in 1960.  

This dedication, coupled with creative business sense, was keyto the creation of a list of hugely successful blockbuster novelists including Jilly Cooper, Leslie Thomas and Penny Vincenzi, to name but a few. Respected and loved by his authors, in the words of Candida Lycett Green, Desmond was simply “magic”. 

Charismatic, witty, and waspish, Elliott lived his life with verve. He drank only champagne, always crossed the Atlantic on Concorde and used Fortnum & Mason as his local shop. His office was in Mayfair and he had homes in London’s St. James’s and New York’s Park Avenue. Desmond Elliott died in August 2003 at the age of 73.

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