The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year

... is most deservedly Sarah Howe for Loop of Jade, a stunning collection of poetry that takes inspiration from the author's dual heritage as the child of a British father and a Chinese mother and her puzzling out of her cultural identity. I'm quite glad both that she won (the collection is seriously wonderful) and that poetry is getting recognition this year, since the landscape for poets so often seems quite bleak. And, as with the Guardian prize, I wish I had found a bookie ahead of time that was running odds.

No one was told ahead of time who the winner was, so I had the chance to chill with the other shortlistees in the Art Room of the London Library. While we were chatting and sipping and trying to quell our nerves before the party I had the odd realisation that it's quite likely we four will be running into each other one way or another for the rest of our professional lives, as will many of the young writers that I've met since March; it was odd but not unpleasant to wonder who of us will park our zimmer frames close together in sixty-odd years so that we can grouse about young upstarts and publishing trends. The party afterwards was very good, though I wound up chatting to too many people to get much to either drink or eat, and was star-struck by Sarah Waters to an embarrassing degree. 

And now that the prize has run its course there is nothing between me and the mound of critical work that came down to Reading to be done during break. 

But then, the laundry does appear to be piling up...