APPRENTICESHIPS 2007

In the second year of the scheme, the selected manuscripts had a distinctly African slant with novels set in Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa and included a range of genres from high gothic to the picaresque.

The five 2007 apprentices were: -

Tanya Chansam
Tanya is a mixed race South African writer living in Sheffield. She has worked in a brake and clutch factory, completed an English degree on the night shifts operating radio control for ambulances and taught English in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Sheffield. Set in North Africa, her novel A Greatcoat and a Bicycle offers a devastating vision of the Second World War, as seen through the eyes of a 'coloured' soldier caught up in a segregated conflict.

Lucy Hewitt
Lucy spent her childhood in Winchester and now lives in Bath, where she works as a Resources Manager for an English teaching website. The first chapter of her novel-in-progress has already been published. (Mslexia magazine. Issue 31. 2006). In The Bandaging Room, which is set in a leprosarium on the south coast of Ghana, a tragic accident forces a young English volunteer to face up to the consequences of her actions.

Elizabeth Melville
Born in Barbados, graduate of Yale, villager of West Sussex. In her novel Via Barbados, a young woman travels from the Caribbean, to England and West Africa and back again, in search of a place to bury her umbilical cord.

Steven Short
Originally from London, Steven has spent most of his life in the North West of England. He shares his life with his wife and cat, but shares his mind with a girl who can open a door to the Imaginary World, a small boy whose brother has lost his soul, and a strange creature who lives in his garden. He writes for children and young people. The Phoenix Contingency is about an orphaned girl who falls into the hands of thieves and learns that nothing is quite as it seems.

David Thorley
David was born in Stoke-on-Trent, and grew up in North Staffordshire. He studied English at Cambridge, Liverpool, and Oxford Universities, and now works as a freelance journalist. He has had some success as a poet including winning second prize in the Bridport Poetry Competition in 1999. In 2007 he was awarded funding by Arts Council England to support his first novel. Gambler Anonymous, is about a bungling obituary writer caught up in a comedy of errors.

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