Young Adult novel wins Adam Prize

Young Adult novel wins Adam Prize

A young adult novel, described by leading United Kingdom children’s author Mal Peet as “richly imagined, sinisterly futuristic and morally complex,” is the first of its genre to be awarded the 2014 Adam Foundation Prize in Creative Writing.

Craig Gamble wrote the winning book, The Watch List, as part of his 2014 Master of Arts folio at Victoria University of Wellington’s International Institute of Modern Letters (IIML). He says receiving the Prize is a great, and humbling, honour.

“I'm completely blown away. This year spent in the MA programme has already been hugely rewarding.

“Being able to spend so much time thinking and talking about writing, and in the company of classmates and teachers who so deeply care about it, has been for me truly life-changing. I am very grateful to have had that experience.”

Craig has previously completed the Children’s Writing workshop and the Young Adult Writing Workshop at the IIML.

Supported by Wellingtonians Denis and Verna Adam through the Victoria University Foundation, the $3,000 Adam Prize is awarded annually to an outstanding student in the Master of Arts in Creative Writing programme at the IIML.

The Watch List imagines what would happen in a crisis if the hero’s sidekick had to take the lead. In a physically and morally dangerous city, its narrator has to come to terms with using everything at his disposal to survive.

Emily Perkins, a Senior Lecturer at the IIML and co-convenor of this year’s Master’s programme, says she was completely drawn in to the exciting and emotionally rewarding story.

“Craig’s writing is vivid and alive, with lots of thrilling action and a wonderfully-drawn teenage narrator navigating his increasingly frightening world with great heart. It will find a wide readership who will respond to the richly imagined setting, resonant characters and dramatic plot,” she says.

Carnegie Medal winner Peet, an examiner for Craig’s thesis, says he was “walloped between the eyes” by the novel.

“Events come thick and fast: this is a novel with its foot on the throttle most of the time… a story that has enormous energy and invention. I look forward to seeing it in print,” he says.

Previous Adam Foundation Prize recipients include acclaimed authors Eleanor Catton, Catherine Chidgey, Paula Morris and Ashleigh Young.

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