Ilkley based author Mandy Sutter has been long listed for the New Welsh Writing Awards 2016

New Welsh Review, in association with the University of South Wales and CADCentre, has announced the longlist of nine travel nonfiction essays for the New Welsh Writing Awards 2016: University of South Wales Prize for Travel Writing.

Both new and established writers based in Wales, England and Ireland are in the running for the top prize including the award-winning travel writer John Harrison.

The Prize celebrates the best short form travel writing (5,000-30,000 words) from emerging and established writers based in the UK and Ireland plus those who have been educated in Wales. The judges are New Welsh Review editor Gwen Davies and award winning travel writer Rory MacLean.

Mandy Sutter grew up in Kent but now lives in Ilkley with her partner and a large black dog called Fable. ‘Bush Meat: As My Mother Told Me’ explores the time her family spent in Nigeria when she was a child.

With striking images including a Barbary duck with a ‘melted face’, and an economy of style of the stiff-upper-lip variety, this travel memoir presents a world where animal, child, bushman, black servant and white employee know his or her place and may seethe in it, or attempt to wriggle around it.

Mandy has co-written two books about the lives of Somali women, published in 2006 and 2007 and her first novel Stretching It was published in 2013. She has also published three poetry pamphlets with independent presses.

Gwen Davies, editor of New Welsh Review said: "This prize has gone from strength to strength in its second year with an increased number of entries and an excellent standard of writing."

For more information about the long listed writers visit newwelshwritingawards.com/longlist-1/

The shortlist will be announced at an event at Hay Festival on June 1, 2016 and the winner at a ceremony at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff on July 7, 2016.

First prize is £1,000 cash, e-publication by New Welsh Review on their New Welsh Rarebyte imprint in 2016, a positive critique by leading literary agent Cathryn Summerhayes at WME, as well as lunch with her in London. Second prize is a weeklong residential course in 2016 of the winner’s choice at T? Newydd Writing Centre in Gwynedd, north Wales. Third prize is a weekend stay at Gladstone’s Library in Flintshire, north Wales. All three winners will also receive a one-year subscription to the magazine. In addition New Welsh Review will consider the highly commended and shortlisted nominees for publication in a forthcoming edition of its creative magazine New Welsh Reader with an associated standard fee.