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1.New Writing

This month's New Writing theme is now live on the website. The focus theme for this month is Close Encounters which features work from Eoghan Walls, Michel Faber and Chris Womersley. The pieces of writing included in this section are eerie, haunting and disturbing, preying on the idea of the unknown. The website includes notes for teachers, notes for readers, author interviews and glossaries which we will be updating on a monthly basis, focusing on a wide selection of short stories, poems, novel extracts and essays.

Eoghan Walls's stunning poem, 'The Naming of the Rat', lyrically places the notion of rats within a historical context and explores why they were put on earth.

A hard-core drinker has to come to terms with something lurking in his shed in Chris Wormersley's thrilling story, 'The Shed'.

During period of homelessness and living on the streets of London Michel Faber reaches a pivotal moment which is to have influence over him for the rest of his life as outlined in 'Me and Dave and Mount Olympus'.

2. Tale of a sexless tortoise shortlisted for science book prize

Epic tales of the earliest Britons, misguided quests for happiness and the long life of a sexless tortoise are among the finalists shortlisted for the Royal Society’s annual science book prize of £10,000. Homo Britannicus, Chris Stringer. In Search of Memory, Eric R Kandel. Lonesome George, Henry Nicholls. One in Three, Adam Wishart. Stumbling on Happiness, Daniel Gilbert. The Rough Guide to Climate Change, Robert Henson. Click here for more information about the shortlist.

3. Orphanage tale wins story prize

Author Julian Gough has been announced as the winner of the £15,000 National Short Story Prize. The London-born writer, 40, won for The Orphan and The Mob, the tale of a young boy who flees a children’s home. Find out who else was shortlisted.

4. Heroes and heroin: the 10 greatest novels for children

One is a tale about a family of tiny people living beneath the floor; another explores the world of a 14-year-old heroin user; and a third enacts a fantasy of demons and witch-clans. They are among 10 books nominated as the most important children’s novels of the past 70 years. See which books made the top 10.

5. 2007 Commonwealth Short Story Competition

Entries are now invited for the 2007 Commonwealth Short Story Competition, which aims to increase understanding and appreciation of and between Commonwealth cultures, to showcase the rich diversity of the Commonwealth and to support rising literary talents. There is no entry fee or form, and there is a first prize of £2000. Only the winners will be notified and entries will not be acknowledged or returned. The deadline for receipt of entries is extended to 15 May 2007. For further information, click here.

6. Nigeria dominates Caine Prize  

Writers from Nigeria feature prominently on the eighth Caine Prize for African Writing, producing three of the five shortlisted stories for this year’s competition. Writers from Uganda and South Africa make up the five-strong shortlist, which includes Monica Arac de Nyeko, who is a participant in the British Council’s Crossing Borders project.      

7. Smaller publishers loom large in short fiction prize   

Alice Munro and David Malouf head the longlist for the world’s richest prize for a collection of short stories, the Frank O’Connor award. The 34 names in the running for the €35,000 (£24,000) prize include nine writers from America, six from Britain and Ireland, five from Australia, two from Canada as well as one each from New Zealand, Bulgaria, Iceland, Montserrat, Israel and Kenya.     

8. African author takes English foreign fiction award

José Eduardo Agualusa is the first African to win the Arts Council sponsored prize. His The Book of Chameleons, translated by Daniel Hahn, was awarded the £10,000 prize for its "witty originality and profound humanity". The book, which is set in contemporary Angola, tackles the subject of memory, and the shifting nature of truth, through the medium of an unusual narrator - a lizard. Find out more about the author and his winning novel   

9. Matar wins Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize

Libyan novelist Hisham Matar has won the fourth Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, worth £10,000 and presented on Monday at the Travellers Club in Pal Mall. The novel, In the Country of Men (Penguin) - which was shortlisted for last year’s Man Booker Prize and is in contention for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, having won the Best First Book award in the Europe and South Asia category - is a child’s-eye view of Libya under Gaddafi. Read the full story.

10. Samuel Johnson shortlist packs political punch

The six-strong shortlist of the £30,000 non-fiction prize covers the murder of Theo van Gogh, the exploits of a pioneering female archaeologist-cum-spy, and a portrait of the chaos of American rule in Iraq following the 2003 invasion. Find out more about the books that made the shortlist  

11. Veterans dominate Carnegie medal shortlist    

The children’s author Jan Mark, who died earlier this year, has been shortlisted for this year’s Carnegie medal for her posthumously-published last book, Turbulence. Mark, who has won the medal on two previous occasions, joins three other previous winners and one newcomer on the shortlist for the medal, which is the UK’s longest-established book award for children’s writing. Read the full story here.