Saga Prize

The Saga Prize was a literary award for new Black British novelists, which ran from 1995 to 1998.

History

The actress and writer Marsha Hunt established the Saga Prize in 1995 to recognise the literature emerging from 'indigenous black Britons' experiences.^[1] The prize – of £3,000 and a book contract – was for unpublished first novels. To be eligible, entrants needed a black African ancestor and to have been born in the United Kingdom or Republic of Ireland. The prize was sponsored by the travel firm Saga plc.^[2] Judges included Andrea Levy and Margaret Busby.^[3]

The "afrocentric" nature of the Saga Prize and its restrictive definition of blackness caused controversy.^[2] The Commission for Racial Equality objected to its creation,^[4] and the Society of Authors refused to support it.^[5][6]

The prize ran for four years and closed in 1998 ^[7]

Winners and further literary careers

1995: Diran Adebayo, Some Kind of Black^[8]

Some Kind of Black (1997) centred on the youthful adventures of its British-born Nigerian protagonist, Dele, in London. The book also won the Writers' Guild of Great Britain's New Writer of the Year Award, the Author's Club First Novel Award, and a Betty Trask Award. It was also longlisted for the Booker Prize.Adebayo wrote one further novel and became a Creative Writing Lecturer. Some Kind of Black is now a Virago Modern Classic and was adapted for BBC Radio 4 in 2022.

* 1996: Joanna Traynor, Sister Josephine^[9]

Traynor described her novel as "a semi-autobiographical account of a foster child on a white northern working class council estate and her experience of hospital life as a nurse in Liverpool."^[10] In 2008 Traynor won a Churchill fellowship to research the impact of slavery.^[11] Traynor wrote two further novels, Divine, ^[12] 1999 ,and Bitch Money 2000 ^[13] both published by Bloomsbury.

1997: Judith Bryan, Bernard and the Cloth Monkey^[14]

Bernard and the Cloth Monkey is a portrayal of family guilt. Bryan became a Creative Writing Lecturer at Roehampton University and wrote for theatre. Her play A Cold Snap was placed second in the 2008 Alfred Fagon Award,^[15] and was subsequently produced in 2011 as Keeping Mum, at the Brockley Jack Studio Theatre as part of Write Now 2.^[16] Bernard and the Cloth Monkey was republished in 2022 as part of a collection of rediscovered works celebrating Black Britain curated by Bernardine Evaristo.

* 1998: Ike Eze-Anyika, Canteen Culture

Following this book about the police force,^[17] Eze-Anyika did not publish any further works

References

1. Marsha Hunt (8 August 1995). "Saga that led to a miracle". The Herald.
2. Mark Stein (2002). "Saga Prize". In Alison Donnell (ed.). Companion to Contemporary Black British Culture. Routledge. p. 270. ISBN 978-1-134-70025-7.
3. Margaret Busby, "Andrea Levy remembered", Royal Society of Literature. Retrieved 6 July 2020.
4. Deirdre Osborne (2009). "Introduction: Longevity and Critical Legitimacy: The 'So-called' Literary Tradition Versus the 'Actual' Cultural Network". Women: A Cultural Review. 20 (3: Contemporary Black British Women's Writing): 239. doi:10.1080/09574040903285685. S2CID 219608713.
5. Tracy J. Prince (2012). Culture Wars in British Literature: Multiculturalism and National Identity. McFarland. p. 153. ISBN 978-0-7864-6294-0.
6. Mark Stein, Black British Literature: Novels of Transformation, Ohio State University Press, 2004, p. 15.
7. Cole Moreton (4 January 1998). "Books: Some kind of success | As the Saga Prize folds, Cole Moreton asks: has it really got easier for black writers?". The Independent.
8. Adebayo, Diran (2009). Some kind of black (Repr ed.). London: Abacus. ISBN 978-0349108728.
9. Traynor, Joanna (1998). Sister Josephine. Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-0-7475-3511-9. Retrieved 5 January 2024.
10. "The life of a prize-winning author has its ups and downs", PR Newswire, 23 October 1996.
11. "Exeter 2015 workshop papers | Legacies of British Slavery". www.ucl.ac.uk. Retrieved 15 December 2023.
12. Traynor, Joanna (1 July 1999). Divine: A Novel (Bloomsbury Paperbacks). Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. OL 7961816M. Retrieved 5 January 2024.
13. Traynor, Joanna (2000). Bitch Money. Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-0-7475-4792-1. Retrieved 5 January 2024.
14. Bryan, Judith; Evaristo, Bernardine (2021). Bernard and the cloth monkey. London: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0241482681.
15. "Alfred Fagon Award Archive - Page 2 of 3". Alfred Fagon Award. Retrieved 5 January 2024.
16. "Keeping Mum by Judith Bryan". Jack Studio Theatre.
17. Jaggi, Maya (15 March 2000). "Why I had to leave the police". The Guardian. Retrieved 5 January 2024.