Genre: Fiction

The much anticipated longlist for the 2012 Man Booker Prize—the United Kingdom's most prestigious literary award, given annually for a novel—was announced yesterday. Unlike previous years, when more established novelists comprised the longlist, many of this year's twelve contenders are emerging authors. Four of the titles are debuts, and three were published by small, independent presses.

“Goodness, madness, and bewildering urban change are among the themes of this year’s longlist,” said Peter Stothard, chair of the 2012 judges and editor of the Times Literary Supplement. “We did not set out to reject the old guard but, after a year of sustained critical argument by a demanding panel of judges, the new has come powering through.”

The finalists include: Nicola Barker for The Yips (Fourth Estate), Ned Beauman for The Teleportation Accident (Sceptre), André Brink for Philida (Harvill Secker), Tan Twan Eng for The Garden of Evening Mists (Myrmidon Books), Michael Frayn for Skios (Faber & Faber), Rachel Joyce for The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (Doubleday), Deborah Levy for Swimming Home (And Other Stories), Hilary Mantel for Bring up the Bodies (Fourth Estate), Alison Moore for The Lighthouse (Salt), Will Self for Umbrella (Bloomsbury), Jeet Thayil for Narcopolis (Faber & Faber), and Sam Thompson for Communion Town (Fourth Estate).

The shortlist, which will include six finalists culled by the judges from the original twelve, will be announced on September 11, and the winner will be announced on October 16. Each of the shortlisted writers is awarded £2,500, and the winner receives £50,000.

Along with Stothard, the 2012 judges include Dinah Birch, Amanda Foreman, Dan Stevens, and Bharat Tandon. “To maintain the consistent excellence of the Man Booker Prize,” states the prize’s mission, “judges are chosen from a wide range of disciplines, including critics, writers and academics, but also poets, politicians, and actors, all with a passion for quality fiction.”

Finalist Hilary Mantel won the prize in 2009 for her novel Wolf Hall (Fourth Estate), the first in a trilogy of which her current long-listed title is the second installment. Julian Barnes won the 2011 prize for The Sense of an Ending (Random House).

Established as the Booker Prize in 1969, the annual award is given to residents of the United Kingdom, the British Commonwealth, and the Republic of Ireland for a novel published in the previous year. The next Man Booker International Prize, which is given biennially to a novelist from any country—and which Philip Roth last won in 2011—will be held in 2013.

For the past seven years, Nancy Kline has been leading P&W–supported senior writing workshops at Queens Community House in New York City. Her short stories, essays, literary criticism, and translations have appeared widely. She is the author of the novel, The Faithful, and edited and contributed to the essay collection How Writers Teach Writing. She also reviews regularly for the New York Times Sunday Book Review. Kline generously shared with us reflections on her writing workshops with seniors.

What makes your workshops unique?
It’s the students who make my workshops unique—their jokes, epiphanies, reticencies, and idiosyncrasies; their chemistry with each other, with me, and with words. 

Could you share a few examples of stories written in your workshop recently?
In one workshop, we used pieces from Flash Fiction Forward as springboards into workshop participants’ own work.

Rick Moody’s “Drawer” inspired a hilarious description of the anarchic contents of one writer’s drawer and her increasing hysteria as she searched through it for some coveted item.

In response to the prompt "just like her mother," suggested by Pamela Painter's "Toasters," one workshop participant wrote about how, as a small child, she accompanied her mother to forage secretly for an apronful of grain with which to feed her starving family in decimated, post-World War II Germany.

Rob Carney's “Traveling Alone” inspired one eighty-six-year-old student's biblical monologue. When asked what she planned to write about next, having just done God, she replied: “Sex.” And so she did.

What techniques do you employ to help shy writers open up?
In my experience, all writers are shy, at least on some level. We are naked in the page. For this reason, I try to establish a respectful, attentive environment in my writing workshops. Laughter helps.

I try to teach students to listen to their readers’ comments, without defensiveness or undue docility, and to comment on other people’s work with rigor and charity; to write any written comments in pencil, rather than pen; and to try to phrase their comments as questions, rather than statements. 

There’s a difference between asking a writer "Could you clarify this?" and stamping a text "Unclear." The former recognizes that the writer is in charge of her own words and has the power to change them. The latter suggests, to my ear, that the reader is in charge and the writer has failed.

What has been your most rewarding experience as a teacher?
It is always that moment when a student gets it, whatever it happens to be. Sometimes a writer who has been struggling with constricted prose suddenly writes in a text so lush and genuine that the workshop falls silent in admiration. Smaller epiphanies occur: During a recent session on comma use, one of the seniors exclaimed, “Commas actually communicate information! I never knew that!” This was thrilling.

What affect has this work had on you?
It is deeply moving to be in the presence of the accumulated wisdom, imagination, and courage of the women and men with whom I’m working. Four of my students have died since I began to offer these workshops. Their deaths have marked me and their colleagues, and have underlined the collective sense that each of us has many stories to tell, and that we had better hurry up and tell them.

Photo: Nancy Kline. Credit: Adam Piore.
Support for Readings/Workshops in New York City is provided, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Department of Cultural Affairs, with additional support from the Louis & Anne Abrons Foundation, the Axe-Houghton Foundation, the A.K. Starr Charitable Trust, and Friends of Poets & Writers.