Congratulations to Lesley Harrison, who has been longlisted for the 2023 Highland Book Prize with her collection Kitchen Music!

Now in its seventh year, the list includes non-fiction, literary fiction and poetry. The prize is presented by the Highland Society of London and Moniack Mhor, Scotland’s National Writing Centre, and celebrates literature that comes from the rich landscape and culture of the Scottish Highlands and Islands.

The shortlist will be announced in May 2024. The winner will be revealed at an award ceremony held in partnership with Nairn Book & Arts Festival on Tuesday 3rd September.

Well done to all the longlisted authors and publishers, and good luck to everyone - especially Lesley! Find out more about the prize and the full longlist here.

In her first Carcanet collection, Lesley Harrison looks north to the sea, the heat of the land at her back. In inventive arrangements of sound and page, Harrison meditates on whale hunts, lost children, cities seen and remembered, and the sound of the gamelan in the Gulf of Bothnia.

'A book of poems, a book of voices. A book that is also a map, an almanac, a report - of histories, of stories, of lands and waters. A book of poems made and arranged in such a way as to create harbours and enclosures: the contained order of narrative brought to a wild scattering of events; a careful arrangement of whale bones on a gallery floor to tell the tale of that great singing creature now stilled to silence.' - Kirsty Gunn