Hilary Mantel on judging the Hilary Mantel prize

Kingston University Writing School’s new prize for short fiction is named after me, so I was invited to judge it. It’s been a bracing experience

Kingston University has endowed a new short fiction prize, worth £3,000 to the winner. As it’s called The Kingston Writing School Hilary Mantel short story competition, I was unsurprised, if honoured, to be asked to judge the final round. Reading the longlist was a bracing experience. Of the first five stories I picked up, four contained a suicide. The quality, however, was cheering and I selected three finalists.

Annemarie Neary is a London-based lawyer and a graduate of Trinity College Dublin. She has published a novel, A Parachute in the Lime Tree, set in Ireland in 1941. She has a master’s degree in art history, specialising in Venetian art of the Renaissance. Venice seems a long way from the sombre setting of her story One Day in Sarajevo, but no doubt her experience there has sharpened her eye for the process by which history is made over into tourist spectacle.

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