Kingsolver, Pinkckney win James Tait Back Prizes

Thursday, 27 July 2023 Books+Publishing

In the UK, Barbara Kingsolver and Darryl Pinckney have been awarded the James Tait Black Prizes for fiction and biography respectively.

Kingsolver was awarded the fiction prize for Demon Copperhead (Faber), a reimagining of Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield, set in the Appalachian Mountains in Virginia in the US. Judge Benjamin Bateman called Demon Copperhead ‘a captivating piece of realist literature which is exceptional across all of the dimensions we look for’.

Pinckney was awarded the biography prize for Come Back in September: A literary education on West Sixty-Seventh Street, Manhattan (Rivverrun), a memoir about the writer’s apprenticeship with the authors Elizabeth Hardwick and Barbara Epstein. Judge Simon Cooke said the title was ‘thoroughly absorbing: a vivid, nuanced, and moving tribute to Elizabeth Hardwick, a fascinating portrait of a place, time, and milieu, and a profound meditation on memory, friendship, and the literary life’.

Founded in 1919, the James Tait Black Prizes are awarded annually by the University of Edinburgh and are judged by postgraduate students and senior academics at the university. Each winning author receives £10,000 (A$19,140).

The winners of last year’s prizes were Keith Ridgway and Amit Chaudhuri for fiction and biography respectively.