Brave memoir on disability wins East Anglian Book of the Year 2022

Iron Man (Salt Publishing), the debut memoir by novelist and short story writer Lynne Bryan, has been crowned Book of the Year at the East Anglian Book Awards 2022, after triumphing in the Memoir & Biography category.  

The announcement was made at a ceremony hosted by awards partners Jarrold, the Eastern Daily Press and the National Centre for Writing on 16th February. Bryan receives a £1,000 prize.

Published by independent publishing house Salt, based in Cromer, Iron Man addresses Bryan’s relationship with her disabled father and the writer’s block she had experienced for over a decade. 

Bryan said: “If feels absolutely amazing to win. I’ve never won anything for my writing so this is a big thing for me. Iron Man was so very difficult to write and very difficult to place with a publisher. I’m grateful to Salt for being brave enough to take the book on. I’m just thrilled. This prize will give me the confidence to keep writing.

“The book began in 2015 at my father’s hospital bedside as he lay dying. I listened to what his visitors said about him, their memories of what happened when he first became paralysed after contracting polio while swimming in the local canal and I noted every detail. A boy of 15, able-bodied then suddenly not, confined to a life of dragging himself around using a leg-iron and crutches, a life that exposed him to humiliation and unfairness, that saw him get paid less than able-bodied men, that saw him fire up an extraordinary will to survive. My notes became a diary.

“Then I dug out another diary that I’d started at art school and began to make connections between my artworks and references to his leg-iron, which resulted in my making connections with another diary which I’d written when pregnant. On and on.”

Caroline Jarrold, community affairs adviser at Jarrold & Sons and one of the judges for this year’s prize, said: “Iron Man is the book that Lynne Bryan had to write. It is a brave and honest account, beautifully written and a very worthy winner.” 

The winning titles in the sub-categories were: Stewkey Blues: Stories by D J Taylor (Salt Publishing) in Fiction; The Art of Doris and Anna Zinkeisen by Philip Kelleway, Emma Roodhouse, and Nicola Evans (Unicorn) in General Non-Fiction; Wingfield: Suffolk’s Forgotten Castle by Elaine Murphy (Poppyland Publishing) in History & Tradition; Boudicca by Matt Haw (Templar Poetry) in Poetry; and Spark by Mitch Johnson (Orion), which won The Mal Peet Children’s Award. The Exceptional Contribution Award 2022 for outstanding work within writing and publishing in the region was presented to longstanding publishing magazine The Rialto.