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Summer 2009 news:

GLASS WINS SOMERSET MAUGHAM AWARD

It was announced on 18th June 2009 that Rodge Glass has won the Somerset Maugham Award, one of the most distinguished literary prizes in the UK. This was for his biography of Alasdair Gray and comes after four previous shortlistings for his novels No Fireworks and Hope for Newborns, plus a recent shortlisting for the Scottish Arts Council Award for Non-Fiction in 2009, also for the Gray biography.

The Somerset Maugham Award has been going since 1947, is open to all writers of fiction, non-fiction and poetry under 35 years old, and boasts a long list of many of the best writers to be published in the UK in the post-Second World War period. Previous winners include Kingsley and Martin Amis, BS Johnson, Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney and Ian McEwan, and more recently Sarah Waters, AL Kennedy and Carol Anne Duffy. Find the complete list of winners here and the details of the award here.

ALASDAIR GRAY: A SECRETARY’S BIOGRAPHY

Rodge’s latest book, Alasdair Gray: A Secretary’s Biography is due out soon in paperback, published by Bloomsbury. It’s released on 21st September at £9.99.

The original version of the book was published in hardback on September 8th 2008, and has since been widely reviewed, by everyone from Time Magazine to the The Scotsman to Jonathan Coe in the London Review of Books. The vast majority of these were good. Suspiciously enough, Alasdair himself even reviewed it in The Guardian, and gave a general thumbs up (with a few small complaints…) A sample of the reviews can be found here:

Karl Miller in the Times Literary Supplement – ‘Faustian Fun with Alasdair Gray’
Allan Massie in The Scotsman – ‘Shades of Gray’
Ian Sansom in The Guardian – ‘It Didn’t Seem Like Much Fun at the Time’,
Lewis Jones in the Financial Times – ‘Old Man in Penury’
Michael Brunton in Time Magazine – ‘Shades of Gray’
and Alasdair’s own assessment of reading his life in print – ‘Be My Boswell!’

These are all generally positive, but you’ll find a couple of spikier assessments below:

James Purdon in The Observer – ‘In Shades of Gray’
Andro Linklater in The Spectator – ‘Perhaps the Greatest?’

HOPE FOR NEWBORNS

Rodge’s novel Hope for Newborns was released in paperback by his fiction publishers, Faber and Faber, on 4th June 2009. Review coverage for this was more widespread and more positive than for debut No Fireworks. Here are links to a few of the reviews for Hope for Newborns in trade paperback format, published in 2008:

Nicholas Royale in The Independent – ‘There’s Nothing Funny About Rodge Glass’s Excellent ‘Comic’ Novel’
Roger Cox in The Scotsman – ‘Razor Sharp View of Confusion’
Alfred Hickling in The Guardian – ‘Pride of Place’
Keir Hind in The Skinny , interview/feature – ‘One to Watch’
NB: You can read the first chapter of Hope for Newborns, ‘Aftermath of an Attack’, on the ‘From Glasgow to Saturn’ website:
A further extract is published in the July Issue of online magazine 3am
An interview with Rodge by Katie Popperwell at City Life Magazine can be found here.
An interview with Rodge by Sharon Blackie of Two Raven Press can be found here.