The BACLS Monograph Prize—2018 Winner

Jane Elliott (King’s College London): The Microeconomic Mode (Columbia University Press)

From a number of truly excellent submissions,The Microeconomic Mode stood out for the originality of its approach to contemporary literature and culture. Drawing a diverse range of examples together through an innovative methodology, this book is an impressive example of interdisciplinary research, and advances a new approach to how cultural texts are positioned.

The BACLS Edited Collection Prize—2018 Winner

Daniel O’Gorman & Robert Eaglestone (eds), The Routledge Companion to Twenty-First Century Literary Fiction (London: Routledge, 2018)

This hugely impressive collection makes a tremendous contribution to the kind of writing and research that BACLS promotes. It supports and advances the transformations that the association and its members are making to literary studies, and underlines the significance of the contemporary as a major area of literary studies.

The BACLS Postgraduate Essay Prize—2018 Winner

Joe Ondrak (Sheffield Hallam University): ‘Spectres des monstres: Post-postmodernisms, hauntology and creepypasta narratives as digital fiction’ Horror Studies, Vol. 9, issue 2 (Autumn 2018)

Described by panellists as ‘fascinating’, ‘engaging’ and ‘thorough in its research’, this essay offers a new, ‘creepy’ way to consider the ways in which contemporary media technologies are transforming the production, dissemination and nature of fiction.

The BACLS Postgraduate Essay Prize—2018 Commendation

Emma Parker (University of Leeds): ‘Penelope Lively’s Speculative Life Writing’ Moving Worlds: A Journal of Transcultural Writing, Vol. 18 (July 2018)

Panellists commended this essay because of how it identifies and defines speculative life-writing as a category in ways that scholars will find tremendously useful. Others are likely to take inspiration from it by expanding this category and by applying it to work by other writers.