Former St. John’s Student co-founds The Green Carnation Prize book awards

Former St. John’s pupil, Simon Savidge has co founded new book awards, The Green Carnation Prize. The longlist has been announced today.

Simon, who attended St. Johns from 1991-1998 also writes the book blog Savidge Reads, which is the third most read online book review in the UK according to Wikio, coming in ahead of the likes of The Times.

To remain a trusted and neutral reviewer Simon, 28, has chosen not to go down the advertising route, so makes no money from his breathtakingly successful blog. His role as the London Editor of Bent Magazine, for which he has been a writer for the past 5 years, makes for a pretty impressive “day job”, though.

With the creation of The Green Carnation Prize, Simon has yet another project to keep him busy.

So how did it all come about?  On July 27th when the Man Booker longlist was announced, author Paul Magrs pondered on Twitter as to why there was no prize for gay men’s writing in the UK. Simon added a supportive “what a great idea” comment and several e-mails later something began to emerge. Of course there are gay writers on the Booker list, but Paul and Simon felt an awards specifically celebrating the work of gay male writers across all genres was conspicuous in its absence from the British literary scene.

Initially baring a remarkably apt name much more similar to “Man Booker”, the awards became “The Green Carnation Prize” (a reference to Oscar Wilde), when a number of publishers said they loved the idea of the awards but were a little more dubious about the name. The judges this year are Paul Magrs, Simon Savidge, actress Katy Manning, “Queen of Cosy Crime” Lesley Cookman, and book blogger Nick Campbell.

The longlist for the inaugural year of The Green Carnation Prize was announced today, the shortlist will be announced on November 1st followed by the announcement of the winning book on December 1st, 2010.