If you had told me this time last year my book could be up for an award, I would have laughed. But this last week has been a bit of a whirlwind as it has been nominated for two and won one.
I’ve been following the Lakes Book Awards for years now, seeing the winners and the nominees in the Westmorland Gazette and Cumbria Life. So to even be nominated was a huge buzz. I took my mum along to the dinner and was over the moon to win the Bill Rollinson Award. It was great to meet the other authors – there is such a wealth of talent coming from the hills and valleys of Cumbria. Congrats to all the other nominees and especially to Polly Atkin, who wrote Some of Us Just Fall, the overall prize winner. It’s a brilliant book!
The same week, it was announced Rural has been nominated for the Wainwright Prize. This really did blow my mind. It’s another prize I have been following for years, carefully remembering the authors on the lists and buying/borrowing their books from the library. I genuinely thought they had the wrong person when I read the email. I was also surprised to see my book in the category of ‘nature writing’ – I’m over the moon the judges have picked books this year that document the people who work in nature or in rural areas alongside the natural elements we often see in nature writing. The countryside can be a wonderful place but is not always an easy place to live.
