Villa Concordia

Last week I arrived at the Internationales Künstlerhaus Villa Concordia in Bamberg, Germany where I will be based for the next eleven months as a Literature Fellow. The Künstlerhaus hosts a number of artists, writers and composers from Germany and one other country each year, with scholarships provided by the Free State of Bavaria. You can see below the warm welcome given to the British artists and our German colleagues: a personal welcome on the steps of the beautiful 18th-century building.

I'm excited to be participating in a few cultural events in Bamberg and Munich during May: details here.

Rathbones Folio Prize

The Library of Ice has been longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2019, open to all works of literature written in English and published in the UK. The Academy judges Kate Clanchy (chair), Chloe Aridjis and Owen Sheers nominated 20 books (pictured above) for the £30,000 prize, which will be announced on 20 May. Congratulations to my fellow nominees!

 I'm very grateful to the Academy, and to all my readers and reviewers for their belief in the book.

More information at https://www.rathbonesfolioprize.com

Italian edition of 'The Library of Ice'

On 30 January the Italian publishing house Bompiani released La Biblioteca del Ghiaccio, a new translation of The Library of Ice by Andrea Asioli. Italian readers will be able to make discoveries about ice not only in the polar regions but also closer to home: for example, the book recounts the role of the weather on the Italian Front during World War I (or the Winter War) and the early Italian icehouses which inspired 17th-century garden designer John Evelyn. I'm delighted to join the ranks of English-language authors published by Bompiani, including AL Kennedy, George Orwell, Ruth Rendell, Patti Smith and Evelyn Waugh. More details here.