Which literary work will win this year's Warwick Prize for Writing?

Ever heard of the Warwick Prize for Writing?

Me neither, that is, until today when I ran across a press release saying that six works had been named to the short list of nominees for this year’s award.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Warwick Prize, it is given ever two years “for an excellent and substantial piece of writing in the English language, in any genre or form, on a theme that will change with every award.” The theme for the 2011 award is “colour.”

The prize, which was first awarded in 2009, is worth 50,000 English pounds, that is, about 80,000 dollars American. The award was launched and is sponsored by the University of Warwick, which is located in Coventry, England. Anyone at Warwick University, including professors, students, alumni and staff, can nominate a work for the prize.

According to the university’s website (http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/prizeforwriting/), the Warwick Prize is the “only cross-disciplinary writing competition in existence, including things such as scientific research, novels, poems, websites, movies and plays.”

The short list for this year’s award was released on Friday, and six works made the cut. They include:
- “The Wasted Vigil” by Nadeem Aslam
- “Dazzled and Deceived: Mimicry and Camouflage” by Peter Forbes
- “The Memory of Love” by Aminatta Forna
- “The Literature Police: Apartheid Censorship and its Cultural Consequences” by Peter D. McDonald
- “What Color is the Sacred?!” by Michael Taussig
- “White Egrets” by Derek Walcott.

One of these works will receive the 2011 Warwick Prize, and the winner will be announced on March 22.

The above works and five others were named to the long list for this year’s award several months ago. Other works on the long list were:
- “Colour and Meaning in Ancient Rome” by Mark Bradley
- “Shades of Grey” by Jasper Fforde
- “Molotov’s Magic Lantern” by Rachel Polonsky
- “Lisa Robertson’s Magenta Soul Whip” by Lisa Robertson
- “Hackney, That Rose Red Empire” by Iain Sinclair

“The Shock of Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism” by Naomi Klein won the first Warwick Prize in 2009. The theme for that year’s award was “complexity.”

Other works that made the short list for the inaugural award were:
- “Mad, Bad and Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors from 1800” by Lisa Appignanesi
- “The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed Bishop Gerardi?” by Francisco Goldman
- “Reinventing the Sacred” by Stuart A. Kauffman
- “The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the 20th Century” by Alex Ross
- “Montano’s Malady” by Enrique Vila-Matas and translated by Jonathan Dunne

Works that made the long list in 2009 were:
- “The Tiger That Isn’t” by Michael Blastland and Andrew Dilnot
- “Torques: Drafts 58-76” by Rachel Blau DuPlessis
- “Glister” by John Burnside
- “Planet of Slums” by Mike Davies
- “Someone Else” by John Huges
- “The Burning” by Thomas Legendre
- “Adam’s Ancestors: Race Religion and the Politics of Human Origins” by David Livingstone
- “The Wild Places” by Robert Macfarlane
- “The Meaning of the 21st Century” by James Martin
- “Brasyl” by Ian McDonald
- “Netherland” by Joseph O’Neill
- “The Informers” by Juan Gabriel Vasquez and translated by Anne McLean
- “Portrait with Keys” by Ivan Vladislavic
- “The Trader, The Owner, The Slave” by James Walvin.

In the end, how many of you have ever heard of the Warwick Prize prior to tonight? Have any of you had a chance to read any of the above works? Which would you recommend? Which do you think has the best chance of winning this year’s prize? Let us know in the comments section below.