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We are delighted to announce that Ian McGuire’s THE NORTH WATER (Scribner, 2016) has been shortlisted for the inaugural Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award. THE NORTH WATER, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and Winner of the RSL Encore Award for best second novel, will be judged by Managing Director David Headley and his team at Goldsboro Books. The annual prize celebrates contemporary fiction published the previous year and will be awarded to a novel that is “compelling, possesses brilliant characterisation with a distinct voice that is confidently written and assuredly realised.” The winner will be announced on 28 September at Goldsboro Books.

We are delighted to announce that Gill Meller’s GATHER (Quadrille), Thomasina Miers’ HOME COOK (Guardian Faber) and Sumayya Usmani’s MOUNTAIN BERRIES AND DESERT SPICE (Frances Lincoln) have been nominated for Book of the Year at the Food and Travel Reader Awards 2017! From thousands of entries, readers of Food and Travel Magazine voted for their favourites in the world of food, drink and travel. Shortlisted candidates in this hotly contested category also include Rick Stein and José Pizarro. Winners will be announced at the awards ceremony on 18th September at the RAC in London. Vote for your winner here.

Gill Meller’s GATHER has been shortlisted by the Guild of Food Writers for Cookery Book of the Year. The awards ceremony will be held and the winners announced on 22 June at The Oval Space in Bethnal Green. Meller draws from the beauty and abundance of the British landscape to create a collection of simple and stunning recipes. GATHER has been one of the most celebrated debut cookbooks of recent years. Earlier this month it was awarded Best Debut Food Book at the 2017 Fortnum & Mason Food and Drink Awards.

We are pleased to congratulate Gill Meller, who has been awarded the prize for Best Debut Food Book at the 2017 Fortnum & Mason Food and Drink Awards. Gill has been part of the River Cottage team for 11 years, and his book GATHER, published by Quadrille in September 2016, contains recipes that demonstrate his love of the landscape and nature. The awards celebrate the very best writing on the subject of food and drink, and we are thrilled to see Gill recognised for his heartfelt debut.

We are delighted to announce that both Andrew Taylor and C. J. Sansom have been shortlisted for the CWA Dagger in the Library award! The prestigious prize has been described by the Crime Writers’ Association as going to ‘a body of work by a crime writer that users of libraries particularly admire.’ Staff from 175 libraries throughout the UK and Ireland nominated the longlist, with a handful of senior librarians and authors choosing shortlisted writers, as well as the final winner. Last year’s winner and this year’s judge, Elly Griffiths, went on to describe the award as ‘one of the best moments of my writing career.’ The winner will be announced at the British Library on Saturday 17 June.

Congratulations to Sarah Waters who has been named Author of the Year at the inaugural DIVA Awards! Waters beat shortlisted authors Val McDermid and Kiki Archer to the prize at the awards ceremony at London’s Café de Paris on 23rd March. The DIVA 250 ceremony celebrated 250 issues of DIVA, Europe’s best-selling lesbian and bisexual magazine. Winning one of 15 potential awards, Waters was joined by Mhairi Black and Jane Hill, who were also recognised in their respective categories.

We are pleased to congratulate Ian McGuire on winning the 2017 RSL Encore Award for THE NORTH WATER! The £10,000 prize has been awarded annually since 1990 for the year’s best second novel. In the words of Chair of Judges Alex Clark: “The North Water works by disorientation, from its violent opening scenes to its voyage through high seas and blocks of ice; it creates a series of unstable, dangerous environments, and peoples them with the good, the bad and all points in between.” RSL Encore Award 2017 Press Release Julia Copus, a judge for the award, commented: “Comparisons with great seafaring novels of the past are inevitable and valid, and yet it’s the riveting, closing scenes, set on dry land and played out with cinematic immediacy, that make this book what it is. I have never read anything quite like it.” For more information about THE NORTH WATER, which was also longlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize, visit Ian McGuire’s website: http://thenorthwater.net/

Architectural gurus Kieran Long and Piers Taylor return, offering their expertise to those up and down the country who are determined to build their own home on a budget of £100K. The next episode, airing on 1 March, concentrates on a retired Yorkshire couple who gamble their life savings only to find that their house may have been built in the wrong place. The programme airs on Wednesdays at 8pm on BBC Two. @kieranlong

David Bez (SALAD LOVE, BREAKFAST LOVE), Jordan Bourke (OUR KOREAN KITCHEN, HEALTHY BAKING) and Gill Meller (GATHER, RIVER COTTAGE: PIGS AND PORK) will all be in attendance at this year’s Fare Healthy festival on the 4 – 5 February 2017. On the 4th, Jordan, Gill and David will be on the Fare Healthy Demo Stage – showcasing a selection of their favourite recipes – at 11:00, 12:30 and 16:00, respectively. In addition, Gill is also participating in a panel discussion about food waste on the Main Stage at 13:00; and co-hosting the “Root to Fruit” banquet – a zero-waste supper club – at 19:30, with all profits going to Action Against Hunger. Now in its second year and third incarnation, Fare Healthy is “a feel-good festival of food, exercise and wellbeing” spanning two days – with dozens of stalls, speakers and interactive sessions helmed by some the UK’s foremost experts in healthy eating and living – at The Old Truman Brewery, London. Please visit the Fare Healthy website for tickets and more information.

Laura Barnett's short story, "Survivors" - specially commissioned by the BBC - was read by Tamsin Greig and broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Barnett's festive tale is centred on "blended families", the pull of familial ties and the difficulty of ignoring the past. "Survivors" originally aired on Friday 16 December, at 15:45. For more information, please visit the Radio 4 website; and to read the full text of "Survivors", visit laura-barnett.co.uk.

Ian McGuire's THE NORTH WATER has been selected by the editors of The New York Times Book Review as one of the ten best books of 2016. In his The New York Times review, BROOKLYN author, Colm Toibin, called THE NORTH WATER "riveting and darkly brilliant"; and Pulitzer prize-winning critic, Michiko Kakutani, described it as "a great white shark of a book - swift, terrifying, relentless and unstoppable". THE NORTH WATER was longlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize, alongside the likes of Deborah Levy's HOT MILK, and eventual winner, Paul Beatty's, THE SELLOUT.

The play based on Sarah Waters's Man Booker Prize-shortlisted novel, FINGERSMITH, comes to the American Repertory Theatre (A.R.T) this month. Bill Rauch, co-founder of Los Angeles' Cornerstone Theater Company, directs playwright Alexa Junge's faithful re-visioning of what the latter describes as "a valentine to Gothic thriller [that] could very well take its place alongside a novel by Dickens". FINGERSMITH originally premiered at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2015, and runs from 4 December 2016 to 8 January 2017. For tickets and more details, please visit the A.R.T website.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall returns with his new BBC documentary series, Saving Africa's Elephants: Hugh and the Ivory War. The two-part series follows Hugh as he travels from Mozambique, through to Kenya and then Hong Kong, charting the course of the illegal ivory trail. In his exploration of what can be done to stop the killing of African elephants for their ivory, Hugh discovers that as well as Hong Kong other parts of Asia, the UK and Europe play a prominent part in the trade. But is the British government prepared to help put an end to the poaching, laundering and corruption? The first episode of Saving Africa's Elephants will air Monday 24th October on BBC One. For more information please visit the programme’s website.

Joseph Knox (SIRENS), Martha Collison (TWIST) and Viviane Schwarz (HOW TO FIND GOLD) all made appearances at this year's Cheltenham Literature Festival. On 13th October, at Transworld Books' Proof Party, Joseph discussed his debut crime novel, SIRENS, and the experience of seeing his words in print. On 14th October, Martha presented her debut cookery book, with a literal taste of some of the recipes TWIST has to offer. And on 16th October, Viviane ran an event combining live drawing and readings from HOW TO FIND GOLD and IS THERE A DOG IN THIS BOOK. Established in 1949, The Times and Sunday Times Cheltenham Literature Festival has garnered the reputation of being one of the foremost literary events in the world. And with more than 500 speakers - including three of our own, across ten days of discussions, debates, workshops, readings and pop-up performances - this year's festival has only served to strengthen Cheltenham's storied legacy.