It is with great pleasure that I’m able to share with you today that we’ve awarded our £6000 grant to Marissa Mireles Hinds who is working on her first novel, Sucre. A blend of magic realism and historical fiction, the novel will explore themes of (anti)colonialism, black history, fear of motherhood, Caribbean and African spiritualism, family and identity.
I’m sure it must have been difficult to choose from the number of entries, but Sucre sounds like a fascinating story and one that will grow and gain depth with further research.
I’d love to see creative non-fiction stand side-by-side with fiction on platforms like yours, and hope the patrons of this award will consider offering not one but two awards next year. Thankyou BERGSTROM STUDIO for your innovation.
Hi Yasmin, thanks so much for your comment. Sucre certainly is a very impressive project and Marrisa's writing definitely stood out to us. I thought it worth mentioning that as a small team of just three people (and the business being just one year old), one grant was a tremendous amount of work for us, not to mention costly. Fundraising really is a big undertaking. Perhaps one day we will be big enough to offer more grants but that's sadly not going to be our reality in the near future as growth isn't the objective right now. The reason for choosing to dedicate the grant to fiction over non-fiction, is that the vast majority of non-fiction books are commissioned off the back of a proposal, i.e. a pitch for what the book might be. So a publisher commissions the project before the author needs to write it. Whereas for fiction, the novel needs to be completely finished and of a high quality before an agent will consider it, let alone a publisher. So the fiction process always demands the time and investment upfront. I hope that makes sense and thanks so much for your support.
Thank you for such a complete response, Abigail. I'm really impressed by what you have done and totally understand the amount of work involved. I wish you well for the future of the award. I hope for, and will continue to strive for, recognition of CNF as a mainstream genre that is worthy of patronage and recognition. :-)
This is great news! Congratulations Marissa!
I’m sure it must have been difficult to choose from the number of entries, but Sucre sounds like a fascinating story and one that will grow and gain depth with further research.
I’d love to see creative non-fiction stand side-by-side with fiction on platforms like yours, and hope the patrons of this award will consider offering not one but two awards next year. Thankyou BERGSTROM STUDIO for your innovation.
Hi Yasmin, thanks so much for your comment. Sucre certainly is a very impressive project and Marrisa's writing definitely stood out to us. I thought it worth mentioning that as a small team of just three people (and the business being just one year old), one grant was a tremendous amount of work for us, not to mention costly. Fundraising really is a big undertaking. Perhaps one day we will be big enough to offer more grants but that's sadly not going to be our reality in the near future as growth isn't the objective right now. The reason for choosing to dedicate the grant to fiction over non-fiction, is that the vast majority of non-fiction books are commissioned off the back of a proposal, i.e. a pitch for what the book might be. So a publisher commissions the project before the author needs to write it. Whereas for fiction, the novel needs to be completely finished and of a high quality before an agent will consider it, let alone a publisher. So the fiction process always demands the time and investment upfront. I hope that makes sense and thanks so much for your support.
Thank you for such a complete response, Abigail. I'm really impressed by what you have done and totally understand the amount of work involved. I wish you well for the future of the award. I hope for, and will continue to strive for, recognition of CNF as a mainstream genre that is worthy of patronage and recognition. :-)
Congratulations Marissa. Your book sounds great!
Sounds amazing! will look forward to seeing it in print and reading it
thank you!
Congratulations it sounds like a fantastic book.
thank you, thrilled for Marissa