Prize-winning poet Robert Minhinnick unfortunately missed out on the winning prize at the ceremony for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize. His debut novel Sea Holly was nominated for this extremely prestigious prize worth £10,000 that marks a distinguished work of fiction which evokes the spirit of a place.  

 

Robert has previously won the Wales Book of the Year Award for his collection of essays To Babel and Back, and also won the Forward Prize for his poetry.

 

Sea Holly is a stunning first novel by award-winning south Wales poet and essayist Robert Minhinnick, about the strange world of a small Welsh seaside town – Porthcawl. Set in the final week of the holiday season, Sea Holly vividly combines the seedy world of a funfair and a missing person mystery, with the inexorable natural world set on the edge of the sea, and the sand which permeates the novel, “Minhinnick brilliantly evokes the melancholy of this refuge for the washed-up” writes Kate Saunders of The Times.

 

The judges for the RSL Ondaatje Award this year were Elaine Feinstein, Russell Celyn Jones and Romesh Gunesekera; the winner was announced as Graham Robb for The Discovery of France at The Traveller´s Club in London.

 

Robert Minhinnick says “Sea Holly is very much an imaginary place based on the unique seaside resort of Porthcawl in south Wales. The town is built on a limestone promontory, surrounded by sand dunes which contain Bronze Age relics, as well as the debris of our own culture. It is also home to one of ´the biggest caravan sites in Europe´ and a shifting population of fairground workers. Sea Holly is distinctive for its people, its flora and fauna, and perhaps above all for the ceaseless movement of its sands, which infiltrate every corner of the novel and every life described there. The town and its seascape are as vital and alive as any character in the book - I´m delighted the Ondaatje prize judges have picked up on this element." 

 

The shortlisting came hot on the heels of the news that Minhinnick has won a Creative Wales bursary worth £20,000, to write a collection of essays on the theme of people moving across the planet. A prize-winning poet, Robert also won the Wales Book of the Year Award in 2006 for his collection of travel essays To Babel and Back.

 

 

Seren, Wales´ leading literary publisher is no stranger to media attention and award nominations, with a prize-winning list of fiction and poetry. Blue Sky July by Nia Wyn is currently on the longlist for the Wales Book of the Year 2008 Award, Mr Cassini by Lloyd Jones won that award in 2007, and To Babel and Back by Robert Minhinnick won it in 2006. Other prizes include the Costa Poetry Award 2006 for Letter to Patience by John Haynes, the 2007 Jerwood Aldeburgh Award for Kink and Particle by Tiffany Atkinson,

the McKitterick Prize in 2006 for Mr Vogel by Lloyd Jones and shortlisted titles for the Forward Prize, TS Eliot, and Somerset Maugham awards.