![]() Judges of the prize Kate Mosse, Mark Lawson and Anita Sethi said: “This inaugural shortlist vitally reminds us that writing is a job with no mandatory starting date, demonstrated through excellent historical fiction alive with time and period, magical explorations of landscape and love, a devastating story about the hidden consequences of the brutality of wars, and an exploration of the archaeology of the human heart.” ![]() Heather Morris is also nominated (Society of Authors) ![]() The winner of the prize will win £1,000 and a set of collected works by British writer Paul Torday, who published his first novel Salmon Fishing In The Yemen at the age of 60. MacMaster will compete against Morris and Youngson, as well as Su Bristow (Sealskin), Costa Short Story Award-shortlisted Sheila Llewellyn (Walking Wounded) and Sally Magnusson (The Sealwoman’s Gift) in the all-female category. She was 81 when the novel was published, making her the oldest nominee across all prizes for this year’s Society of Authors’ Awards. Having previously published a memoir, her first fiction novel Silence Under A Stone – about a family ripped apart when a son falls for a woman with the wrong faith, and his now-elderly mother’s regret over allowing that to happen – was written “a bit now and a bit then” by MacMaster using two fingers to type it out in her attic. MacMaster, who lives in Dublin, was previously a secondary school teacher and counsellor in Canada and Ireland, before being ordained as a minster of the Church of Ireland in 2004. Previous recipients of the Society of Authors’ Awards prizes include Zadie Smith, Seamus Heaney, Helen Dunmore, Hari Kunzru and Carol Ann Duffy. The awards, judged by writers, is the UK’s biggest literary fund, with more than £100,000 awarded to new and established writers across all categories. Norma MacMaster was 81 when her novel was published (Society of Authors) She is the oldest in the category, which also includes best-selling author Heather Morris, who was 64 when her nominated novel The Tattooist of Auschwitz was published, and Anne Youngson, who was 70 when her novel Meet Me At The Museum was published. Irish writer Norma MacMaster will see her debut novel Silence Under A Stone compete against others for the inaugural Paul Torday Memorial Prize, an award for a first novel by a writer over the age of 60. A debut novelist in her 80s is among the nominees shortlisted for one of the prizes at the Society of Authors’ Awards.
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