Mallon in the running for second writing prize

A GLASGOW-based freelance journalist is in the running for her second award for fiction writing this year.

Maggie Mallon is one of three students from The University of Glasgow’s Edwin Morgan Centre for Creative Writing course named on the shortlist for this year’s Sceptre Prize for emerging writers.

The annual prize, now in its fifth year, is jointly run by the university and Sceptre, an imprint of Hodder & Stoughton, to encourage new Scottish novelists.

Earlier this month, allmediascotland reported that Mallon had won The Curtis Brown Glasgow Prize for Fiction 2012, presented annually to the best fiction writer from across the university’s entire Creative Writing Programme.

Mallon’s as-yet unpublished book, ‘Dreams in Stone’, recounts an English sculptor’s friendship with a fellow artist in 19th century Paris.

The winner will be announced on the final night of Aye Write! Glasgow’s Book Festival on the 17th of next month.

Said Mallon, who is commissioned regularly for news stories and features by the Daily Record, Scottish Daily Mail, The Herald, The Times and The Mail on Sunday: “I loved the course and writing the book, and I’m really so pleased to be shortlisted for the Sceptre Prize after my success in the Curtis Brown competition earlier.

“Obviously, it would be a huge thrill and mean so much to me to win the Sceptre Prize, too, but at the moment I’m so gratified by the positive reactions of such respected judges to my first book.”