We are delighted to announce that The Opportunity Centre 1st Prize winner of the 2022 SI Leeds Literary Prize is Suad Kamardeen for Never Enough. Many congratulations to Suad!
Suad said: “I’m so humbled to be the winner of the SI Leeds Literary Prize 2022! I’d like to say a huge thank you to Fiona, the judges, and everyone who has been a part of organising this prize. I’d also like to say a great thank you to my family and my friends, the All Stories community, the Megaphone community and everyone else who has been a huge part of my writing journey. Writing can be a lonely, lonely profession and it’s prizes like this, and communities fostered by prizes like this, that make it a little bit easier. I remember just a couple of days ago attending a panel event with my fellow shortlisted writers and I left that event feeling rejuvenated, reminded of all of the reasons why I started writing in the first place. I look forward to everything that’s going to come out of this, to meeting my fellow shortlisted writers, to forming more connections and networks with people and making a difference hopefully with my writing. I’m excited to think about how publishing or the landscape of publishing will change in the next two, three years just from the talent I’ve seen from the long list and the shortlist of SI Leeds Literary Prize. Once again, I’d like to say a huge thank you to everyone who’s been a part of this and it’s been an honour and a pleasure being the recipient of the prize for 2022.”
Fiona Goh, Prize Director said: “”We were thrilled with the response to this year’s Prize – lockdown obviously generated lots of fantastic creative writing, as we had our second highest number of entries during a really short entry window. The judges were particularly impressed with the breadth of the storytelling, from speculative fiction to young adult novels, short stories and crime, and they had a really hard set of decisions to make across the different judging rounds. Our wonderful winner of the 10th anniversary award is Suad Kamardeen and we really look forward to seeing her work and that of her fellow shortlisted writers on our bookshelves in years to come. Congratulations!”
2022 trophy (made by Seiko Kinoshita)
Our winners for 2022 are:
The 1st Prize and The Opportunity Centre award goes to Suad Kamardeen for Never Enough
2nd Prize goes to Latoyah Innerarity for Sometimes the Sky is Blue
3rd Prize goes to Laura Fish for Lying Perfectly Still
The SI Readers’ Choice award for 2022, given to the favourite shortlisted entry chosen by some 50 readers drawn from membership of Soroptimist International and readers from across the UK, goes to: Laura Fish for Lying Perfectly Still
Congratulations to all our writers, and to everyone to entered this year’s Prize! We wish you all the best with your writing career and look forward to seeing your writing on our bookshelves in the years to come.
You can watch the award announcement here:
SI Leeds Prize 2022 – Full Award Film 16-9.mp4 from SI Leeds Literary Prize on Vimeo.
