Latest news with #WilliamRayfetHunter
The Guardian
10 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Waterstones debut fiction prize 2025 shortlist announced
Waterstones has selected six 'astonishingly impressive and inspiring new voices' for its fourth debut fiction prize shortlist, including Catherine Airey, William Rayfet Hunter and Lucy Steeds. The shortlist, which also features Gurnaik Johal, Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin and Lisa Ridzén, represents a 'bright and promising future for fiction', said Bea Carvalho, head of books at Waterstones. Airey was shortlisted for Confessions, a multigenerational family saga, described as 'a cool, bold image of female pain and liberation' by Daisy Hildyard in the Guardian. Hunter made the list for Sunstruck, in which an aspiring musician is invited to spend the summer at a mansion in the south of France with a university friend. 'The novel's brisk pacing, together with its shrewd blend of emotional sincerity, brooding intrigue and political overtones, make for a lively beach read,' wrote Houman Barekat in a Guardian review. 'The prose reads like a cross between an airport romance and a screenplay for a Saltburn-style television drama.' The shortlist 'tackles weighty themes and has a lot of fun along the way, celebrating art and transgression, first love and hedonistic summer holidays, and the joy of chosen family,' said Carvalho. 'It also showcases light-footed and playful prose full of verve and panache.' The winner of the prize will be announced on 24 July, and is set to receive £5,000 along with the 'promise of ongoing commitment to the winner's writing career'. Steeds was selected for The Artist, which is about an aspiring journalist who goes to visit a renowned and reclusive artist living in Provence with his niece. 'With lavish, luxurious description, Steeds evokes the sensory environment: the smell of hot earth, the sound of crickets, sunlight on soft yellow stones, 'a constellation of fireflies … spreading and regrouping like a net of stars,'' wrote Christobel Kent in a Guardian review. 'A seductive combination of romance, puzzle and poetry, The Artist also offers a considered interrogation of the value of art: to open windows in human existence, to push against limits, to bring freedom, perspective and light.' The shortlist also features Saraswati by Johal, Ordinary Saints by Ní Mhaoileoin, and When the Cranes Fly South by Ridzén, translated from Swedish by Alice Menzies. When the Cranes Fly South, a bestseller in Sweden, is the first translated novel to be shortlisted for the prize. It is about an elderly man, Bo, living in a rural village in the north of Sweden with his dog, which his son insists must be taken away. The idea for the book came to Ridzén through the discovery of notes her grandfather's care team had left. More than 600 Waterstones booksellers were involved in the selection of the shortlist, and a panel of booksellers will choose the winner. Previous winners of the award are Tess Gunty, Alice Winn and Ferdia Lennon, who won last year for his novel Glorious Exploits, and went on to win the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize.
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Hinge Drops a Romance Anthology to Help Gen Z Believe in Love Again
Dating is rarely a fairy tale, especially if you're one of the many experiencing dating app burnout. But Hinge, the Match Group-owned dating app, still believes in romance, as seen in its latest project that updates literary love stories for a Gen Z audience. Today (May 12), Hinge launched the second installment of its "No Ordinary Love" campaign, which debuted last year and depicts real romances that began on the dating app. In this new chapter, the brand enlisted contemporary writers to bring to life tales of early dating from five couples who met on Hinge. The modern love stories will run as a five-part weekly series on newsletter platform Substack and as a limited-edition hardcover book, produced by Dazed's in-house agency, Dazed Studio. Starting in June, the brand will distribute the anthology at in-person book clubs in New York and London. Writers Jen Winston, William Rayfet Hunter, Hunter Harris, Tomasz Jedrowski, and Upasna Barath penned the stories, which alternate between both partners' perspectives. Hinge first branched out into literature last year, publishing a zine of real-life romantic stories written by authors including Roxane Gay and John Paul Brammer. Gay has returned to write the foreword introducing the Substack series. The brand is tapping into the soaring popularity of books and literature among Gen Z, fueled by channels like TikTok's #BookTok community. Research from Nielsen BookData also revealed that Gen Z favors print books, which accounted for 80% of purchases from November 2021 to 2022. Hinge's campaign will extend through partnerships with creators on Substack and #BookTok, as well as out-of-home ads in New York and London. "We want to complement Substack's community of writers and readers with honest, authentic perspectives on love from exciting literary voices," Jackie Jantos, president and chief marketing officer at Hinge, said in a statement. "By flipping between both partners' perspectives, these real love stories highlight the misreads, overthinking, and unspoken harmony of early dating. Hinge's project continues its efforts to explore storytelling that reaches Gen Z. Under its "Designed to be Deleted" platform, which debuted in 2018, its ads have lately pivoted to capture the messy and serendipitous realities of modern dating. "Dating is really hard, and someone's story, with all the twists and turns, can be really humanizing and give people some hope," Jantos told ADWEEK in March. "Ultimately, the authenticity and truth of those stories are what people connect with." Amid reports of falling dating app usage, particularly among younger audiences, Hinge and rivals including Bumble and Tinder have been ramping up marketing aimed at Gen Z. So far, Hinge has been bucking the downturn: its 2024 revenue rise of 39% outpaced growth at owner Match Group, which saw a 3% revenue increase, and of another brand in the Match portfolio, Tinder, which posted flat revenues in 2024.
