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Journalist and documentary maker Dani Garavelli has won Scotland's new Anne Brown Essay Prize.
Garavelli won the £1,500 award for "The Bequest", described as an "emotionally astute, brilliantly observed" reflection on family, belonging and her cultural heritage as an Italian Scot. The announcement was made during a special event at the Wigtown Book Festival on 26th September.
The award was set up earlier this year following the death of broadcaster Anne Brown, aged 78. Garavelli was presented with the prize and a trophy by Brown’s daughter Jo Lawrence. Brown's son, Richard, introduced the event.
Garavelli said: “It's just an absolute thrill to win this prize. It was it was so exciting just to see my name alongside other people's whose work I love and respect and to be among them. And then to win was so unexpected.”
She welcomed the creation of the prize as providing a much needed new forum in Scotland for long reads and went on to pay tribute to Anne’s journalism, which she described as “inspirational” and “forensic”.
The judges also gave a special commendation to Jemma Neville for her essay "Away with Birds", a heartbreaking account of losing a newborn baby during the pandemic.
Richard Brown said: “My mother was a tireless champion of this festival. She was never happier than when she was here and the festival was in full flow. At the time of her passing we thought, as a family, that the creation of this prize would be an excellent way to commemorate Anne and support the festival in a way that reflected her many interests in literature, her curiosity about people and love of Scotland – she really loved Scotland.”
Adrian Turpin, artistic director of Wigtown Book Festival, said: “The quality of the finalists was outstanding. Any one of them could have made a worthy winner. The panel faced an incredibly difficult choice. 'The Bequest' is an extremely personal piece of writing about family relationships. But in Dani's hands it becomes universal.
“The prize is an important addition to Scotland's literary landscape. This year lays a very strong foundation for the future, for this prize to build and build in strength and to become Scotland’s bold champion for the best non-fiction writing and writers.”
The essays will be published on the Wigtown Book Festival website.