Longlist

For The Dylan Thomas Prize 2006

James Scudamore - The Amnesia Clinic

James Scudamore was born in 1976. After a childhood spent variously in Japan, Brazil and Ecuador (and the UK some of the time) he read Modern Languages at Oxford University. Subsequently he worked in advertising for four years, and then embarked on an MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. The Amnesia Clinic is his first novel.

Joseph Goebel - Torture The Artist

Adam Joeseph Goebel III was born in 1980 in Henderson, Kentucky, a small town on the Ohio River across from Evansville, Indiana. He attended Brescia University in Owensboro, Kentucky, where he received an English degree with an emphasis in professional writing. Before becoming a published author, he was a musician (guitarist and vocalist for a punk band for five years), a screenwriter (has written five screenplays), a horse racetrack employee and a record reviewer. Joey currently lives in Kentucky, where he is writing a third novel. Torture the Artist is published in the UK by Old Street Publishing.

Matthew David Scott - Playing Mercy

Matthew David Scott was born in 1978 in North Manchester. He read English Literature and Philosophy at Sheffield University and after graduating lived in Edinburgh and Cardiff before settling in Newport, South Wales. Matthew contributes to a number of magazines including Welsh mens magazine RedHanded and has been asked to contribute to upcoming anthologies of short fiction inspired by the music of The Fall and The Smiths. His second novel has recently been commissioned by Parthian.

Lucy Caldwell - Where They Were Missed

Lucy Caldwell was born in Belfast in 1981. In 2005 she won the PMA Award for Most Promising Playwright and was on attachment to the National Theatre Studio. Her first full-length play, Leaves, won the 2006 George Devine Award. Lucy Caldwell is currently under commission to write for the main stage at London's Royal Court Theatre. She lives in East London.

Liza Ward - Outside Valentine

Liza Ward is 25. She was born in New York City and holds degrees from Middlebury College and the University of Montana. Her stories have been published in the Atlantic Monthly, the Georgia Review and the Antioch review. Her work has also been selected for the 2004 O'Henry Prize Stories and Harcourts 2004 Best American New Voices collection. She lives in Massachusetts.

Rodge Glass - No Fireworks

Rodge Glass is originally from Cheshire but has lived in Scotland since 1997, where he graduated from Glasgow University with an MPhil in creative writing. He writes for The Herald and is a regular contributor to a number of other magazines. No Fireworks is his first novel.

Rachel Trezise - Fresh Apples

Rachel Trezise was born in the Rhondda Valley in 1978. She went to Treorchy Comprehensive School and at sixteen began to produce Smack Repunzel, a local music fanzine. She studied Journalism and English at Glamorgan University. She has also studied Irish History and Geography, graduating in 2000. Her debut novel In and Out of the Goldfish Bowl was published the same year. An autobiographical account of a young girl growing up in the South Wales Valleys the book was described by Time Out as 'A pitiful tale, a triumphant achievement'.

Kira Cochrane - Escape Routes for Beginners

Born in Essex in 1977, Kira Cochrane studied American Literature at the universities of Sussex and California before moving to London to work as a journalist. She is now Woman's Editor at The Guardian. Escape Routes for Beginners is her second novel.

Ian Holding - Unfeeling

Ian Holding is a school teacher in Harare, where he continues to live, work and write. Unfeeling is his first novel. The events in the novel are based on what happened to a pupil in his school.

Nick Laird - Utterly Monkey - To a Fault

Nick Laird was born in 1975 in Co.Tyrone and studied English at the University of Cambridge, where he won the Quiller-Couch Award for creative writing. He has lived in Warsaw and Boston, where he was a visiting fellow at Harvard University and now lives in London. His debut novel, Utterly Monkey, was published in May 2005 by Fourth Estate and has recently been awarded by Betty Trask prize.

Talitha Stevenson - Exposure

Born in 1977, Talitha Stevenson was educated in London and Oxford where she read English. Talitha left Oxford to study Art History in Florence, living an impoverished artist's existence. On returning to London, she began work on her first novel, An Empty Room which was short listed for the Whitbread First Novel award 2003, the best first book award in the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Eurasia Region) and the Pendleton May first novel Award. Her second novel, Exposure, was published this spring by Virago.

Emily Maguire - Taming the Beast

Emily Maguire is a Sydney novelist, essayist and English teacher. Her articles and essays on sex, religion, culture and literature have been published on newspapers and journals including The Sydney Morning Herald, The Griffith Review and The Observer. Her darkly erotic first novel Taming the Beast, has been translated into ten languages. Emily was awarded an Australian Society of Authors Mentorship in 2003, a Tasmanian Writers' Centre residency in 2006 and received a special commendation in the 2006 Kathleen Mitchell Awards.

Susan Barker - Sayonara Bar

Susan Barker is twenty-six-years old, with a Chinese-Malay mother and an English father, and grew up in East London. She spent two years working in Japan after her graduation. She has just completed an MA in creative writing from Manchester University. Sayonara Bar is her first novel.