Hackney novelist Yvvette Edwards makes Man Booker Prize longlist

Author Yvvette Edwards grew up and attended school in Hackney. Photograph: Danielle Acquah

Hackney-raised novelist Yvvette Edwards has been included in the recently-announced longlist for the 2011 Man Booker Prize.

A Cupboard Full of Coats, which was reviewed in last month’s Citizen, is one of 13 novels to be included on the list.

The novel, which is Edward’s first, is set largely in the borough where she was raised.

Edwards said of the award: “I am dizzy with delight. I am a keen reader and have followed the Booker Prize and its authors avidly for years. There is no higher accolade than to be on the longlist. I am humbled, elated and proud to have achieved this, bedazzled to have done so on my first published book. It’s the heady potent realisation of every writer’s dreams.”

The shortlist of six books is to be announced on 6 September.

A Cupboard Full of Coats by Yvvette Edwards is published by Oneworld Publications.
ISBN 9781851687978
RRP £12.99