Buoyed by the wonderful news of long-time Prize supporter and Patron Bernardine Evaristo‘s Booker Prize win, we are delighted to be launching the 2020 SI Leeds Literary Prize tonight at Ilkley Literature Festival in an event featuring Women’s Prize long listed writer Yvonne Battle-Felton.
Yvonne Battle-Felton
The fifth iteration of our biennial award for fiction by BAME women writers will continue to welcome wonderful new writers into our Prize family, as we celebrate the achievements of our previous alumni.
2014 shortlisted writer Reshma Ruia won the 2019 Word Masala Debut award in New York earlier this year, and her debut poetry collection, A Dinner Party in the Home Counties, is published later this month by Skylark publications. Lemn Sissay said:
‘You will be pleased at discovering award winning poet Reshma Ruia. Her voice is intimate and confident. Her poetry shines bright. Reshma lures the reader into her world through a vivid imagination. From the empty bed of an accountant to the code of 1947, Reshma’s skill is in how she paints pictures with words, which become whole landscapes and scenes in one’s imagination. She ignites the reader. I feel I am reading someone whom everyone will be reading in future. Read her now!’
Reshma Ruia ‘A Dinner Party in the Home Counties’
