Thank you Arts Foundation!

For years I’ve been getting up at 6am every day to write for an hour or so before heading out to work. I’ve always longed to have proper time to write, and now, finally, I have it.

It’s all thanks to the Arts Foundation. At the end of January, they awarded me the Arts Foundation Fellowship in short story writing.

At the awards ceremony at Pentagram in London, I had no idea that I’d won beforehand, so was too excited and nervous to eat any of the delicious canapes floating round. And when Grayson Perry (who hosted the awards) read out my name, and I started to walk up to the stage, I had a moment of panic where I worried that maybe he’d called out someone else’s name and I’d mistakenly heard my own because I wanted to win so badly.

Every year, the Arts Foundation chooses one person from each of several art forms to award a £10k grant, with the aim of buying them six months’ freedom to work on their art. This year, short story writing was one of the chosen forms, alongside ceramics, live performance art, folk music and sculpture. The two previous winners of the short story fellowship were Ali Smith and Michel Faber – what a treat to be in their company! I was also in very strong company for the shortlist: Kevin Barry, Joanna Quinn and Ian Wild.

I’m so grateful to Shelley Warren and everyone at the Arts Foundation, and to the judges of the story award, Alex Linklater, Deborah Rogers and Kamila Shamsie, and to the two lovely people who nominated me for the award, Diana Reich from the Small Wonder festival at Charleston, and Ra Page from Comma Press.

I’m still getting up at six every day to write, but now, there’s no alarm telling me to go get ready for work. I can write fiction all day. What pleasure!