The Penderyn Music Book Prize (‘The Mercury Prize of Books’ – The NME) is the only UK-based book prize specifically for music titles including history, theory, biography, autobiography. The 2017 shortlist was announced at the Boogaloo pub in Highgate, and you can see a video of the announcement by prize organiser, Richard Thomas, here. In attendance were authors Brix Smith Start, Sylvia Patterson and Daniel Rachel, prize judge Eliza Carthy, several notable publishers, editors and agents… and Jon and Stephen from Penderyn. The winner is announced at the Laugharne Weekend Festival on Sunday 9th April 2017.
The shortlist is:
The Rise, The Fall, and The Rise by Brix Smith Start (Faber); Into The Maelstrom: Music, Improvisation and the Dream of Freedom by David Toop (Bloomsbury Academic); I’m Not With The Band: A Writer’s Life Lost in Music by Sylvia Patterson (Sphere); Walls Come Tumbling Down by Daniel Rachel (Publisher); Young Soul Rebels: A Personal History of Northern Soul by Stuart Cosgrove (Polygon); 1971 – Never a Dull Moment: Rock’s Golden Year by David Hepworth (Bantam); Testimony by Robbie Robertson (William Heinemann) & This Is Grime by Hattie Collins & Olivia Rose (Hodder & Stoughton)
The 2017 Judges are Stewart Lee, Charlotte Church, Geoff Travis, Tracey Thorn, Eliza Carthy, Thurston Moore & Jane Beese. For more information, please go here.