Affirm Press Mentorship Award 2023 winners announced

Affirm Press and Varuna, the National Writers’ House have announced the winners of the 2023 Affirm Press Mentorship Award.

The winners are:

• Anne Andrew for ‘Blood Quilt’
• Zoe Downing for ‘The Dead Don’t Disappear’
• Inessa Jackson for ‘Devil Mountain’
• Mark Mupotsa-Russell for ‘Scratches in Lead’.

The four writers, whose manuscripts are all works of crime fiction, will receive a one-week residency and manuscript development at Varuna in March. Two editors from Affirm will attend to provide in-depth manuscript development and feedback, as well as establish ongoing relationships with the winners.

This year’s mentorship received over 120 manuscripts, which were assessed by Varuna judges Hayley Scrivenor and Greg Woodland, who compiled a shortlist from which the Affirm editorial team selected the winners. In addition to the winning four, manuscripts by Claire Sutherland, Jem Tyley-Miller, Phillipa Fioretti and Michelle Barraclough were highly commended.

‘Selecting the four winners this year was a big challenge due to the striking quality of numerous submitted works. We would like to thank everyone who submitted their manuscript as it gave us a rich and varied selection to choose from,’ said Ruby Ashby Orr, Affirm Press senior editor.

‘The four chosen authors have devised unique and exciting concepts in crime fiction that we feel would benefit from further development with an editor. It’s exciting to have such fresh perspectives in this category, and we look forward to working with the authors to develop their manuscripts at Varuna.’

In February, Affirm will publish Inheritance by the late Kath O’Connor, a recipient of the 2017 mentorship. Most recently, Affirm acquired world rights to 2020 mentorship winner Emma Lord’s debut YA novel Anomaly, to be published in 2024.

Pictured: (top row L–R) Anne Andrew, Mark Mupotsa-Russel; bottom row (L–R) Zoe Downing, Inessa Jackson.

Category: Awards Local news