Nicola Griffith
<https://www.facebook.com/nicolagriffith?__cft__[0]=AZXZ4MJNy3doRxVWmChVwyIQCgpa3pJwqnSWc15SoIuOpgXFYFx5ilJMMmwPSe9L7vJ6lnzf_XjN9_n7rUCkecGzPGHBW8Eok2-CnLJ-zbd5bXCOkWeP9beLuLoKS2N9f2AIqL5j0EsWEq2cPYJBCT66Qs4fBUDWQc6jcbeNrI493w&__tn__=-UC%2CP-y-y-R>
(courtesy Joyce Scrivner)
deostSnrpoaul8mt50tggu4h8ith997h07861iimta96im1ft0301a064143
<https://www.facebook.com/groups/353762778033456/permalink/6251252128284462#>
  ·
I’m over the moon to announce that Spear has won the UK Society’s of
Authors’ inaugural ADCI Literary Prize. I couldn't be at the ceremony
because I was at 30,000 feet over the Irish Sea on my way to spend time
with family and then take part in my very first International Medieval
Congress in Leeds. Otherwise I would absolutely have been there. This award
is a big deal for disability representation in literature. I would like to
have been able to show the proper honour and gratitude to the event. Plus—a
party! And people I haven’t seen for years! And many new friends to meet!
But, oh well. It’s still fucking amazing [image: 🙂]
Here’s the press release:
————————
Nicola Griffith wins the inaugural ADCI Literary Prize. Jay Gao and Louise
Kennedy are among the 30 other winners at this year’s SoA Awards.
Nicola Griffith has today (29 June) won the inaugural ADCI (Authors with
Disabilities and Chronic Illnesses) Literary Prize, for Spear (Tordotcom
Publishing), a lyrical, queer reimagining of Arthurian legend, in which
‘those usually airbrushed from history take centre stage’ (ADCI Literary
Prize judge Penny Batchelor).
The prize, launched in 2022 to encourage greater positive representation of
disability in literature, was announced alongside ten other prizes which
make up the annual Society of Authors’ Awards. The SoA Awards is the UK’s
biggest literary prize fund, worth over £100,000, this year shared between
30 writers, poets and illustrators.
The ADCI Literary Prize
Sponsored by Arts Council England, ALCS, the Drusilla Harvey Memorial Fund,
and the Professional Writing Academy, the ADCI Literary Prize is awarded to
a disabled or chronically ill writer, for an outstanding novel containing a
disabled or chronically ill character or characters. Judged by Penny
Batchelor, Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, Nydia Hebden, Karl Knights, Julia Lund,
Nii Ayikwei Parkes, Vikki Patis and Chloe Timms.
ADCI Literary Prize judge Rowan Hisayo Buchanan said:
I was hugely impressed by this work. There is real ambition and fluidity to
the writing. It represents a vast amount of research and yet it wears that
research lightly. While there was much recognizable to anyone with a
glancing knowledge of Arthurian legend, there was also much that felt new.
Griffith combines pre-existing myths in inventive and delightful ways. The
representation in this story is joyful–acknowledging what might cause a
character to be seen as other but finding no shame in it.
—————————
I love the fact that the crip representation—and the queer rep, and the
Black rep—is called out as joyful. That is always my aim: to not just norm
the other but to celebrate and revel in it, to make the queer/crip body a
site of delight. We’ve all read too many stories where the women, the
queer, crip, Black, poor, trans, nonbinary, old (and on and on) suffer for
being who we are. I decided long ago that, nope, not doing that. The single
exception in all my published work is So Lucky, because I needed to tell
the story of a woman understanding what ableism has done to her, and
dismantling and moving past her own, internalised ableism—which is hard
(maybe impossible) to do without exploring how that feels (which, spoiler
alert, is bad). It was a kind of exorcism.
Spear has none of that, just the joy and occasional ordinariness felt by
Peretur (and Llanza and Bedwyr and Hywel) both in their everyday lives and
in heightened moments. Spear (like Menewood, and Hild before that) is about
expanding and sharpening history, taking the single subject of most heroic
historical fiction—the straight, white, nondisabled, noble man—and adding
in the people who have always been there and always ignored, the people
like us. I’m reforging history from a soft, useless piece of iron to an
alloy: light, strong, far more resilient, and, most importantly, much more
true.

fwd TM
https://socialistjazz.blogspot.com/2023/06/fridays-forgotten-books-and-more-links.html
https://socialistjazz.blogspot.com/2023/06/ssw-annotated-facsimile-of-magazine-of.html

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