Prizes

Hilary Mantel will not win a third Booker prize with the final novel in her Thomas Cromwell trilogy, after American writers made a near clean sweep of this year's shortlist.

The Women's Prize Trust is launching Discoveries, a writers' development programme offering aspiring female writers of all ages and backgrounds "encouragement and support" at the beginning of their creative journeys.  Read more

Roger Robinson's vision of Trinidad as a "portable paradise" of "white sands, green hills and fresh fish", has won the British-Trinidadian poet the Royal Society of LiteratureThis British site may seem rather formal (stated aim ‘to sustain and encourage all that is perceived as best whether traditional or experimental in English letters, and to strive for a Catholic appreciation of literature’), but has a lively series of lectures and discussions involving distinguished authors. Also administers literary prizes. http://www.rslit.org/index1.html's £10,000 Ondaatje prize, which goes to a work that best evokes "the spirit of a place".

About eight years ago, the Canadian novelist Susan Swan looked into the research about how female writers compared with male ones when it came to literary prizes and coverage. She was shocked by what she found.

"I thought it was going to be a happy progress report," she said in an interview. "Instead it was a bad news day."  Read more