Shortlist

For The Dylan Thomas Prize 2006

The short list of six authors in the running for the first £60,000 prize were announced at Hurst House in London on 22nd September 2006.

The six finalists came from a wide range of educational and cultural backgrounds - two Oxbridge graduates, Nick Laird and James Scudamore; American writer Liza Ward; Rachel Trezise, from the Rhondda Valleys in Wales; first-time novelist and Zimbabwe based schoolteacher Ian Holding and Belfast-born playwright Lucy Caldwell.

Rachel Trezise - Fresh Apples
Winner of The Dylan Thomas Prize 2006

Rachel Trezise was born in the Rhondda Valley in 1978. She went to Treorchy Comprehensive School and at sixteen began to produce Smack Repunzel, a local music fanzine. She studied Journalism and English at Glamorgan University. She has also studied Irish History and Geography, graduating in 2000. Her debut novel In and Out of the Goldfish Bowl was published the same year. An autobiographical account of a young girl growing up in the South Wales Valleys the book was described by Time Out as 'A pitiful tale, a triumphant achievement'.

James Scudamore - The Amnesia Clinic

James Scudamore was born in 1976. After a childhood spent variously in Japan, Brazil and Ecuador (and the UK some of the time) he read Modern Languages at Oxford University. Subsequently he worked in advertising for four years, and then embarked on an MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. The Amnesia Clinic is his first novel.

Lucy Caldwell - Where They Were Missed

Lucy Caldwell was born in Belfast in 1981. In 2005 she won the PMA Award for Most Promising Playwright and was on attachment to the National Theatre Studio. Her first full-length play, Leaves, won the 2006 George Devine Award. Lucy Caldwell is currently under commission to write for the main stage at London's Royal Court Theatre. She lives in East London.

Liza Ward - Outside Valentine

Liza Ward is 25. She was born in New York City and holds degrees from Middlebury College and the University of Montana. Her stories have been published in the Atlantic Monthly, the Georgia Review and the Antioch review. Her work has also been selected for the 2004 O'Henry Prize Stories and Harcourts 2004 Best American New Voices collection. She lives in Massachusetts.

Ian Holding - Unfeeling

Ian Holding is a school teacher in Harare, where he continues to live, work and write. Unfeeling is his first novel. The events in the novel are based on what happened to a pupil in his school.

Nick Laird - Utterly Monkey - To a Fault

Nick Laird was born in 1975 in Co.Tyrone and studied English at the University of Cambridge, where he won the Quiller-Couch Award for creative writing. He has lived in Warsaw and Boston, where he was a visiting fellow at Harvard University and now lives in London. His debut novel, Utterly Monkey, was published in May 2005 by Fourth Estate and has recently been awarded by Betty Trask prize.