The RSL today announces the winner of the RSL Christopher Bland Prize for authors aged over 50. The prize, now in its seventh year, is an annual award of £10,000 given to a debut novelist or non-fiction writer first published aged 50 or over.
Kathryn Faulke took this year’s prize for her memoir Every Kind of People, which chair of judges Jacqueline Wilson praised for its ‘quiet grace and dry sense of humour.’
Jacqueline surprised Kathryn with the news while she was on shift at the secure unit for dementia patients where she works. The video of Kathryn receiving the news is available to view on our YouTube channel here.
‘I’m so honoured,’ Kathryn said, explaining that she had written her book because she found the care work she does extraordinary. ‘I wanted people to see that it doesn’t matter how old you are, or how what illnesses you have – you are still a human being, and you can still engage. You’re still funny. You’re still interesting. You’re still lively. I really want people to see care as a profession, as something that’s skilled and positive, and as something that’s enjoyable. I just think it’s so important.’
Alongside Jacqueline, fellow judges Richard Coles and Margaret Busby chose Faulke as their winner from a shortlist of five other books representing poetry, fiction and non-fiction:
Diane Abbott – A Woman Like Me
Jane Cholmeley – A Bookshop of One’s Own: How a group of women set out to change the world
Hugo Greenhalgh – The Diaries of Mr Lucas
Anne Hawk – The Pages of the Sea
Richard Shimell – Trees in Winter
Jacqueline explained the judges’ unanimous decision to award Kathryn first prize: ‘The stylish shortlist shows what a variety of entries we’ve had. Any would have been worthy winners, but we were united in thinking Kathryn’s Every Kind of People simply had to be at the very top of the list. It’s a riveting book that treats elderly, infirm and irritable people as the lively and extraordinary human beings they really are. Katherine Faulke is a shining example to us all, though she’s self-deprecating and touchingly hard on herself. Every Kind of People is truly heart-warming and will be in pride of place on my bookshelf of very special books.’
Her colleagues offered the following comments:
Richard Coles: ‘It was not easy to pick a winner from so impressive a shortlist, but Kathryn Faulke’s Every Kind of People reminds us that wonderful kindness and comedy and compassion abound in the care sector, the bourne to which so many of us are destined and for which so few are prepared.’
Margaret Busby: ‘We connected strongly and in different ways with all the books on the shortlist, before agreeing that the exceptional winner was Every Kind of People by Kathryn Faulke. Beyond being a vivid and consistently engaging memoir, it delivers a powerful lesson in humanity that needs to be shared.’
Kathryn added: ‘I’ve always written. I wrote things to make sense of the world, and to record things that I was interested in. I love that moment where you find the right rhythm. You find the right sentence. You find exactly the right word. I came to care work much later in life, having done another clinical job before, and so I’m just overjoyed that the two things that I love so much – care work and writing – have come together in this amazing way!’