Devon authors vie for Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize

The Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize shortlist sees two local Devonshire authors vying for the £10,000 prize. Both Graham Hurley, author of Finisterre, and David Gilman, author of The Last Horseman, are published by independent publishing house Head of Zeus, which is based in London. David is resident in Totnes, whilst Graham lives in Exmouth.

The two authors are shortlisted for the prize, which recognises the best adventure novels published in the last calendar year. The prize first ran in 2016, and is open to writers of any nationality writing in English.

Head of Zeus won Independent Publisher of the Year at the British Book Awards earlier this year, and have a strong list in both historical fiction and adventure writing. Graham Hurley’s second novel, Aurore, came out earlier in 2017 and the fourth in David Gilman’s Master of War series, Viper’s Blood, has just been released in paperback.

Hurley and Gilman will be competing against Sara Sheridan’s On Starlit Seas, Frank Gardner’s Crisis (Bantam Press), Stef Penney’s Under a Pole Star (Quercus) and James Swallow’s Nomad (Zaffre Publishing).

The £10,000 first prize for a published novel will be awarded at a ceremony in September 2017, at London's Royal Geographical Society.