The UK’s first book award celebrating radical, leftwing writing has been launched, with a tweet-by-tweet history of the Egyptian revolution and Owen Jones’s exploration of the demonisation of the working classes, Chavs, competing for the inaugural prize.

The Bread and Roses award for radical publishing – named after the slogan chanted in 1912 by striking textile workers in Massachusetts, who struck for “bread, and for roses too” – is looking for books “informed by socialist, anarchist, environmental, feminist and anti-racist concerns”, which also “inspire, support or report on political and/or personal change”. Run by the newly-formed Alliance of Radical Booksellers, the prize has no corporate sponsorship and believes it is the UK’s only literary award with explicitly leftwing entry criteria.

“Radical publishing is going through a renaissance, making the establishment of the Bread and Roses award timely,” said trustee Ross Bradshaw from Five Leaves Publishing, a literary and radical press. His fellow trustee Nik Gorecki, of Housmans Bookshop, added that “the central involvement of radical bookshops in the establishment and running of the Bread and Roses award also really sets it apart from other book prizes”.

Read the full article in the Guardian

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