Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize Award Announcement 2020

Thursday evening 14th May 2020 saw the the prize giving evening for this years prize, but because of the Corvid 19 pandemic and the current lock down this years prize ceremony was held online with viewers tuning in from across the globe.

This years event was hosted by the award-winning actor and honorary fellow Michael Sheen.

This year’s shortlist comprises three poetry collections, two novels and one short story collection:

• Surge – Jay Bernard (Chatto & Windus)
• Flèche – Mary Jean Chan (Faber & Faber)
• Inland – Téa Obreht (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
• If All the World and Love were Young – Stephen Sexton (Penguin Random House)
• On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous – Ocean Vuong (Jonathan Cape, Vintage)
• Lot – Bryan Washington (Atlantic Books)

 

2020 Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize Shortlist

And it was announced that this years £30,000 Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize was awarded to:

• Bryan Washington  – Lot 

Summary:

In the city of Houston – a sprawling, diverse microcosm of America – the son of a black mother and a Latino father is coming of age. He’s working at his family’s restaurant, weathering his brother’s blows, resenting his older sister’s absence. And discovering he likes boys.
This boy and his family experience the tumult of living in the margins, the heartbreak of ghosts, and the braveries of the human heart. The stories of others living and thriving and dying across Houston’s myriad neighbourhoods are woven throughout to reveal a young woman’s affair detonating across an apartment complex, a rag-tag baseball team, a group of young hustlers, the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, a local drug dealer who takes a Guatemalan teen under his wing, and a reluctant chupacabra.

Bryan Washington’s brilliant, viscerally drawn world leaps off the page with energy, wit, and the infinite longing of people searching for home. With soulful insight into what makes a community, a family, and a life, Lot is about love in all its unsparing and unsteady forms.
 

Many congratulations to Bryan Washington and his collection of stories ‘Lot’ which was also one of Barack Obamas books of the year. Available to order through Amazon and Waterstones as well as your local independent bookshops.

Bryan Washingon:

@brywashing

For further inforamtion about the Dylan Thomas Prize and past winners:

Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize:

https://www.swansea.ac.uk/dylan-thomas-prize/

@dylanthomprize

My thanks as always to everyone at Midas PR for this years invitation to take part in the Shortlist Blog Tour and also for the invitation to the Prize Ceremony.

@midaspr