{"id":27168,"date":"2018-11-27T15:30:39","date_gmt":"2018-11-27T15:30:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thevoiceoflondon.co.uk\/?p=27168"},"modified":"2018-11-27T15:30:39","modified_gmt":"2018-11-27T15:30:39","slug":"the-staunch-book-prize-winner-announced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/the-staunch-book-prize-winner-announced\/","title":{"rendered":"The Staunch book prize winner announced"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_27170\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-27170\" class=\"size-full wp-image-27170\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/64\/2018\/11\/on-the-Java-ridge.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"620\" height=\"960\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-27170\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">On the Java Ridge cover book @ Staunch Book Prize Facebook<\/p><\/div>\n<p><b>The Australian novelist Jock Serong bagged the Staunch prize with On the Java Ridge. It tells the story of a group of surfers who try to rescue a refugee boat caught up in a storm off the Indonesian coast. <\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Staunch Prize founder Bridget Lawless praised the book author for putting a topic of concern (the Australian&#8217;s refugee policy) in the spotlight with &#8220;vivid descriptions, raw compassion and expert control of his material&#8221;.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Creating a thriller &#8220;in which no woman is beaten, stalked, sexually exploited, raped or murdered&#8221;, made Serong eligible to win the \u00a32,000 award.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">During the ceremony, Lawless said: \u201cThis is exactly the quality of thriller that\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Staunch set out to find, and we\u2019re proud to name it as our winner.<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">So proud to announce that Jock Serong is the winner of the Staunch Book Prize 2018. On The Java Ridge!<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Staunch Book Prize (@StaunchBkPrize) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/StaunchBkPrize\/status\/1067174415207735297?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">November 26, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cIt\u2019s a good thriller, with all of the usual jeopardy and ups and downs. There is very strong writing, it\u2019s very brutal, and there is violence, but there is nothing gratuitous. And one of the adversaries is nature, which we don\u2019t see enough of.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Serong competed against five other shortlisted texts that did not feature violence against women. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">After unveiling the winner, the proud Lawless said: &#8220;Guess what? It\u2019s possible. When rape and murder are used as entertainment so endlessly, and really dominate in popular culture, it\u2019s a bit strange when you stop and think about it. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cWe can\u2019t really tackle violence against women when we\u2019re sucking it up as entertainment.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Staunch prize received many entries and Joyce Thompson, the author of one of the six shortlisted books, told the Voice of London that the award was timely and necessary.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">However, it has attracted criticism from crime writers such as Sophie Hannah, who admitted to the Guardian: \u201cIf we can\u2019t stop human beings from viciously harming one another, we need to be able to write stories in which that harm is subjected to psychological and moral scrutiny, and punished.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">But Thompson said to the Voice of London: &#8220;The prize doesn&#8217;t punish or shame other artists who choose to probe the dark side of gendered violence. It just doesn&#8217;t reward them. Publishers and producers do enough of that already&#8221;.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Joined on the judging panel by actor Doon Mackichan, literary agent Piers Blofeld and editor Elaine Richard, Bridget Lawless reminded to be on the lookout for a sponsor for next years award.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Words: Federica Riondino | Subbing: Millie Richardson<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Australian novelist Jock Serong bagged the Staunch prize with On the Java Ridge. It tells the story of a group of surfers who try to rescue a refugee boat caught up in a storm&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":476,"featured_media":27170,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,42],"tags":[553,926,1645,2128,6756],"class_list":["post-27168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-entertainment","tag-art","tag-books","tag-culture","tag-entertainment","tag-voiceoflondon"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/476"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27168\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}