Congratulations to Jen Hadfield

Scottish poet Jen Hadfield, who was published in Hanging Loose 79 & 82 and in the anthology Word Jig: New Fiction from Scotland, has won the most prestigious British poetry prize, the T. S. Eliot Award. Congratulations Jen.

From the Independent

Rising Star: Jen Hadfield, poet

By Katy Guest
Friday, 16 January 2009

As the youngest winner of the T S Eliot Prize, at 30, Jen Hadfield is also a relative newcomer. The £15,000 cheque that she collected on Monday has previously been awarded to Seamus Heaney, Carol Ann Duffy and Ted Hughes – though never to Andrew Motion, the chair of this year's judges.

Announcing her win, Motion described Hadfield's poetry collection, 'Nigh-No-Place', as "a revelation; jaunty, energetic, iconoclastic – even devil-may-care". Born in Cheshire, with an English father and a Canadian mother, Hadfield studied English at Edinburgh University, where she worked with the novelist and poet Robert Allan Jamieson.

In 2002 she received a Scottish Arts Council Writer's Bursary, and in 2003 she won an Eric Gregory Award which she used to fund a year in Canada. Four years ago she moved to Shetland, a place and dialect which informs much of her poetry. A stint in a fish-packing factory to makes ends meet resulted in a poem about haddock and their "gut worms".

Sherman Alexie Is Small Press Month Posterboy

We're very proud to announce Sherman Alexie is the posterboy for Small Press Month. As some of you may already know, Hanging Loose was the first to publish Alexie in our magazine and published his first book, The Business of Fancydancing. Since then he has gone on to publish many books, has made two movies and won numerous awards for his work, including the National Book Award which he won last year. He has remained loyal to Hanging Loose Press and continued to publish all his books of poetry with us, including Face which will be out in April of this year (2009). His other books The Business of Fancydancing, First Indian on the Moon, Summer of Black Widows, One Stick Song and The Business of Fancydancing: The Screenplay are all available from Hanging Loose Press. His website is www.shermanalexie.com.