This article titled “Debut novel by unemployed civil servant longlisted for £10,000 award” was written by Alison Flood, for guardian.co.uk on Wednesday 20th April 2011 16.25 UTCLast year, Stephen Kelman had been made redundant from his job in local government administration and was trying to sell his first novel to a publisher. A year on, his debut Pigeon English has just been longlisted for a £10,000 literary award.
Loosely based on the story of Damilola Taylor, the 10-year-old boy killed in Peckham in 2000, the novel follows schoolboy Harrison Opoku, recently arrived in the UK from Ghana, as he absorbs the new reality of life on an inner-city housing estate and starts his own murder investigation into the knifing of a boy on the local high street.
It has been longlisted for the £10,000 Desmond Elliott prize – which goes to a debut novel – alongside nine other first novels, from lawyer Jonathan Lee’s Who is Mr Satoshi? to Guardian journalist Leo Benedictus’s The Afterparty, and has also seen Kelman tipped by Waterstone’s as one of its novelists to watch.
“It was completely out of the blue – quite a shock and very gratifying,” said Kelman of the longlisting. “One of the things about being on a prize list for first-timers is that it means a lot to be recognised. It bodes well for my confidence going forwards for books two, three and four.”
Kelman was unemployed when Pigeon English was snapped up by Bloomsbury last February for a six-figure sum, following a 12-way auction. “I was made redundant as I completed the first draft of my book, so in a way it’s turned out well,” he said. “I do have a couple of failed examples [of novels], gathering dust, but this was the first to catch the attention of an agent.”
The novel “has as its backdrop issues of knife crime and child violence, but more than that, it’s a coming-of-age tale with a sweet central character”, he said. “I wanted to show the dark elements of society, but through the eyes of the kind of character who can also see the light. [Harrison] is filled with exuberance and has a positive way of looking at the world.”
The contenders will be narrowed down to a shortlist of three on 25 May. The winner of the prize, set up in honour of publisher and literary agent Desmond Elliott to champion new writers, will be announced on 23 June.
The Desmond Elliott longlist in full:
The Afterparty by Leo Benedictus
Boxer Beetle by Ned Beauman
Coconut Unlimited by Nikesh Shukla
The Collaborator by Mirza Waheed
Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman
Pub Walks in Underhill Country by Nat Segnit
Saraswati Park by Anjali Joseph
The Spider Truces by Tom Connolly
A Vision of Loveliness by Louise Levene
Who is Mr Satoshi? by Jonathan Lee
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Will Cameron’s speech on funding only be fit for the box-office kings?
Public Sector Pages | Local Authority News, NHS News, Public Sector News | January 11, 2012
The plans to overhaul public funding of British cinema, which David Cameron will announce later today during a visit to Pinewood studios, has so far drawn divided reactions.
According to early reports, Cameron will call for lottery funding to be aimed at big-budget, commercially successful films, and away from small-scale, independent cinema. Citing the box-office and awards success of The King’s Speech and Slumdog Millionaire, he said: “Our role should be to support the sector in becoming even more dynamic and entrepreneurial, helping UK producers to make commercially successful pictures that rival … the best international productions.”
Iain Smith, the chair of the British Film Commission, an organisation also cited favourably by Cameron for its work in attracting overseas productions to shoot in the UK, said in response: “It is reassuring to hear the government understands the role big-budget, international movies shooting in the UK plays in building a world-class skilled workforce, while boosting the UK economy.”
A report on the Today show suggested that the likes of Mike Leigh – a critically successful but far from commercial film-maker – are “finished”, but given that Leigh is currently marked with establishment favour by an Olympics commission, that may be a hasty conclusion.
Leigh’s contemporary Ken Loach – another critic’s favourite but no box-office heavyweight – has suggested that the government’s plans include the return of profits to the producers, instead of the funding bodies as is currently the case. If this proves true, it will mark a sharp change from the modus operandi of the UK Film Council, which provided funding from lottery sources as a “loan”, and expected repayment from a film’s income.
With the much-criticised abolition of the UKFC being their first major act in the film-making sector, the coalition have been under pressure to develop a more coherent, constructive policy toward the sector. The costs associated with transferring the UKFC’s functions to the BFI appear to have wiped out any of the financial savings the UKFC’s abolition was supposed to achieve. Now it seems that the coalition will be considerably more relaxed about returns to the public purse of money handed out to UK film producers.
What this means for the future of UK film production has yet to be established. A runaway hashtag on Twitter, #fundablefilms, is drawing spoof suggestions for future film titles. It is notoriously difficult to predict commercial success in cinema, and during the lottery era the UK funding agencies have proved vulnerable to the financial machinations of wily film producers – the main reason why the UKFC’s safeguards were introduced. The spectacle of profits being creamed off by Hollywood studios, after start-up funding from the UK lottery, is a very real possibility.
Furthermore, commercial film-making carries enormous financial risk; will the British public be happy to see millions go down the drain on inevitable failures? Whenever public funding bodies try to act like studios, they end up getting burned, as the furore around Sex Lives of the Potato Men demonstrated.
Moreover, what would happen to small-scale, high-impact films such as Shame, Wuthering Heights, The Deep Blue Sea and We Need to Talk About Kevin; all low-budget, “difficult” films that required a “cultural” imperative to get off the ground? Let alone the likes of Lindsay Anderson’s If…, which Cameron professed to admire only days ago.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011