Join us on Wednesday 23 November, 7pm at the Whittaker Ellis Suite, Old Town Hall, Richmond for the official announcement of the winner of the 4th Virginia Prize for Fiction.
As part of the Richmond Literary Festival, Aurora Metro has put together an evening to celebrate the publication of this year’s winner of the Virginia Prize for Fiction – Shambala Junction by Dipika Mukherjee.
The evening will start with a talk by Frances Spalding, on Virginia Woolf (in whom’s name the prize is dedicated) exploring her lifelong fascination with the fabric and fabrication of fiction and suggests why she continues to be a powerful influence on novelists today.
Frances Spalding is a biographer, critic and art historian. She curated the exhibition Virginia Woolf: Art, Life and Vision at the National Portrait Gallery in 2014 and was awarded a C.B.E. for services to Literature in 2005.
The talk will be followed by the award of The Virginia Prize for Fiction, launched by Aurora Metro in 2009 to promote new and emerging women novelists. This year the prize is being awarded to Dipika Mukherjee’s for her novel ‘Shambala Junction’. Mukherjee’s debut novel was long-listed for the Man Asian Literary Prize then published as ‘Thunder Demons’.
This evening will also see the launch of a campaign to erect a statue of Virginia Woolf in Richmond upon Thames.