Literary cash boost for authors

Rushdie was a previous Arts Council recipient

Salman Rushdie has announced Arts Council grants for 15 authors to allow them to continue with works in progress.

an investment in the future of our literary culture is an investment for ourselves

Salman Rushdie

The Satanic Verses writer, a previous winner, unveiled the recipients of the £7,000 awards at a ceremony at the National Portrait Gallery.

The grants cover writers from different genres, who have had at least one book published.

Previous recipients have included 10 Booker Prize winners and 26 Whitbread Award winners including Ted Hughes, A S Byatt and Kazuo Ishiguro.

The winners were chosen from 300 applicants vying for the cash handouts.

Australian novelist Kathryn Heyman is one the lucky ones to be picked this year.

Her last novel, The Breaking, was shortlisted for the Stakis Prize for the Scottish Writer of Year and longlisted for the Orange Prize.

Stewart Home is the author of 16 published books of fiction and cultural commentary.

He also pursues feuds as a form of performance art, going on Art Strike in the early 90s to encourage critical debate around the concept of art.

His archive documenting 20 years of these actions was recently sold to the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Future investment

Rushdie said: "I was once lucky enough to receive an Arts Council bursary, I have been convinced ever since of the dual importance of these awards.

"At various moments during the last two decades some people have suggested that direct financial support for living writers should be left to publishers.

"I have always argued against this. Writers need these grants both for the money and the affirmation.

"And we need to understand that an investment in the future of our literary culture is an investment, also, for ourselves."

The recipients are:

Biography

Sarah LeFanu
Clare Dudman

Fiction

Anna Davis
Kathryn Heyman
Bernard Cohen
Louise Doughty
Stewart Home

Literature for young people

Linda Kempton

Poetry

Colette Bryce
Matthew Barton
Pascale Petit
Jeremy Reed
Julia Copus

Other literary writing

Philippa Scott