Penguin set to publish winner Rashid’s work
Last updated 15:02, Friday, 27 June 2008
RASHID Adamson, a second year Joint Honours Journalism and Creative Writing student at the University of Cumbria, has been awarded the decibel Penguin Prize 2008.
The prize is a collaboration between decibel, an Arts Council England initiative dedicated to promoting diversity in the arts, and Penguin Books.
The theme of this years decibel prize explored the experience of what it is like to have a mixed heritage.
Judges, who included Shami Chakrabarti and author Kate Mosse, were looking for true stories that illuminate the complexities, challenges and joys of having such a background.
Rashid’s story captures some of the complex issues he experienced whilst growing up with dual heritage in Britain.
His dad was a Muslim from Pakistan and his mum a Catholic from Middlesbrough.
Rashid, who studies at the Brampton Road Campus in Carlisle, says: “It is a great honour to be rewarded in this way for my work.
“Three years ago I enrolled on a course at Carlisle College, having left school with no qualifications; I had to do an access course to get the relevant points to go onto higher education.
“Now, two years into my BA Joint Hons creative writing and journalism degree, I am being published in a Penguin anthology – that’s a ‘nice’ reward, and it confirms, slightly, that I am not as daft as I thought!
“Thanks to the university and my intellectual, steadfast mentors, I have had the pleasure of being afforded a platform from which to explore my chosen subjects and I think I have not only found my dream, I am closer to it.
“The beautiful thing is, as I am realising my dream, thoughts of it being an unachievable fantasy are dispelling.”
Nick Pemberton, course leader for creative writing at the University of Cumbria, said: “I’m delighted for Rashid. He is a very sound human being who asks the kinds of questions that I think university students should be asking about the complex and difficult world they live in.
“We can teach him some technical skills about writing but what he has developed for himself – and what I think no one could have taught him – is an uncompromising desire to tell the truth about events that are sometimes chaotic and sometimes painful.
“He’s looked on stuff inside himself and outside in the world without flinching.”
The winning entries will be published in a Penguin anthology in November this year.
