Writing the future for Scottish novelists

The shortlist for this year's Sceptre Prize for emerging writers has been announced. Three students, Miles Beard, Philip Murnin, and Maggie Ritchie from the University of Glasgow's Edwin Morgan Centre for Creative Writing have been shortlisted from nine longlisted writers for the £1500 prize. The annual Sceptre Prize, now in its fifth year is jointly run by the University of Glasgow and Sceptre (an imprint of Hodder & Stoughton) to encourage new Scottish novelists. All students from the University of Glasgow's acclaimed Edwin Morgan Centre for Creative Writing who achieve Distinctions in their final projects are eligible. They must submit between 5,000 and 10,000 words of a novel or a novel in progress. Miles Beard's The Lazy King is set across the timeframe of a single play and tells the story of a college dropout who wants to make it in theatre. Phoenixland by Philip Murnin is a dark and comic novel about drug addiction told through the perspective of a child.