Shapcott beats Desai book in Costa awards
London poet Jo Shapcott’s poetry collection, Of Mutability, which deals with her experience of breast cancer, has won the Costa Book of the Year.
The 57-year-old poetess beat competition from Indian writer Kishwar Desai’s debut novel Witness the Night, potter and ceramic artist Edmund de Waal’s memoir The Hare With Amber Eyes, novelist Maggie O’Farrell’s The Hand That First Held Mine, and first-time children’s author Jason Wallace’s Out of Shadows, to win the prestigious £30,000 prize.
The awards, formerly known as the Whitbread Book Awards, have five categories — novel, first novel, biography, poetry and children’s book — and an overall Costa Book of the Year is selected from the winners of these categories. Each category has four shortlisted books and the winner in each receives £5,000.
“I’m so shocked I’ve won, I haven’t thought about that. I’ll probably do the guttering or something,” said Shapcott after being awarded £30,000 in prize money at a ceremony in central London on Tuesday night.
Kishwar Desai had in December won in the debut novel category. Indian-origin filmmaker and writer Nikesh Shukla, and India-based journalist Aatish Taseer had been shortlisted for the first novel award.
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Cruz, Bardem welcome their first child
Los Angeles: Hollywood stars Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem have welcomed their first child.
The Academy award winning actress gave birth to the baby on Tuesday, but the notoriously private couple have not yet disclosed the child’s gender or name.
The news was revealed by Spanish newspaper El Pais, which reported that the baby was born in Los Angeles at the world-renowned Cedars Sinai hospital.
The 36-year-old actress married fellow Spaniard and Oscar winner Bardem, 41, at a low-key ceremony in the Caribbean in July last year. The pair started dating in 2007 after starring together in the Woody Allen movie Vicky Cristina Barcelona. —PTI
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