Vanessa Gebbie, winner of the University's Paddon Award 2007.
Paddon Award win kick-starts writing career for Exeter alumna
A win at the University of Exeter’s Paddon Award and with the Telegraph in 2007 signalled the start of a rich writing career for an Exeter alumna.
Vanessa Gebbie (BA French 1974) started her career as an author in 2002 before going on to win the Telegraph’s Novel in a Year Competition and the University’s Paddon Award in 2007.
Vanessa’s debut novel The Coward’s Tale, the story of a Welsh mining town and its inhabitants, was a Financial Times Book of the Year and Guardian Readers’ Book of the Year. She is also author of two collections of short fiction, Words from a Glass Bubble and Storm Warning.
A second edition of her text book Short Circuit, Guide to the Art of the Short Story is also due out this year from Salt Publishing. This collection of craft and process essays by over 20 prizewinning writers, for which she is contributing editor, is recommended reading for creative writing courses in the UK and beyond.
Vanessa is also a poet - having won the 2012 Troubadour International Poetry Prize, her first poetry collection, The Half-life of Fathers is out this autumn with poetry publisher Pighog Press.
Vanessa is recipient of a Hawthornden International Fellowship, an Arts Council Grant for the Arts and a Gladstone’s Library residency. She is also a freelance writing tutor and works with writers of all levels. She was writer in residence at Stockholm University in 2010, and taught at the Vienna Writers’ Studio in 2012.
Date: 26 February 2013
