Rack Press Shortlisted for Michael Marks Award

Rack Press is delighted to learn that we have been shortlisted for the 2012 Michael Marks Publisher's Award. The winner will be announced on 23rd June. We think it is the first time since the award was launched that a Welsh publisher has been shortlisted.  We are equally thrilled that Róisín Tierney has also been shortlisted in the pamphlet category for her Dream Endings.  


Announcing the shortlist, the judges said that: "Rack Press, run by Nicholas Murray [seen here at this year's London launch of the 2012 series of pamphlets with Rack poets Denise Saul, Michèle Roberts, Martina Evans and Dan Wyke] and based in Powys, is notable for its beautifully minimalist, elegant pamphlets. Whilst the appearance of each is identical - a slim volume with simple typography on high-quality cream laid paper - Rack's published poets have a real diversity of style. Murray states that he believes 'in the poetry pamphlet as the natural vehicle for the single poem or sequence' and the judges felt that this was particularly effective in this year's Rack Press pamphlets."

Roίsίn Tierney was born in Dublin in 1963 and studied psychology and philosophy at University College Dublin. She moved to London in 1985, where she has held jobs ranging from make-up artist to museum administrator. She has been widely published in magazines and group anthologies, and won many prizes, but Dream Endings represents her first solo published collection.

As the judges put it: "Dream Endings assembles a cast of misfits and eccentrics to explore illness, madness, incest and death, but Tierney's vision is at all times tender and non-judgemental. Her language is remarkable both for the lucidity of its surface and for the depths that it allows us to apprehend."