Petina Gappah wins 2009 Guardian First Book Award

Granta writer Petina Gappah has won this year’s Guardian first book award for An Elegy for Easterly. The £10,000 award is unique among book prizes for its recognition of new writing in both fiction and non-fiction, as well as its international scope.

The chair of judges, Guardian literary editor Claire Armitstead, called Gappah’s collection of short stories a ‘humane and disarmingly funny mosaic of life in Zimbabwe.’ The panel of judges also included BBC presenter Martha Kearney and novelists Tobias Hill and Nadeem Aslam.

Gappah's impassioned 'An Open Letter to Mbeki' appeared on the Granta website last year.

Also shortlisted for the prize was Granta author Eleanor Catton’s The Rehearsal, a highly innovative debut novel which centres on an affair between a schoolgirl and her music teacher, and the representation of this at a local drama school. Eleanor Catton’s story ‘Two Tides’ was featured in Granta’s New Fiction Special earlier this year – you can read it here, and watch her interview with Granta here.