Jeremy Dyson (writer for the League of Gentlemen) won with his collection The Cranes that Built the Cranes, and the lovely Robert Shearman won the Readers’ Prize for his Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical. It was great to meet Robert and Nuala again, as well as Adam Marek (who was shortlisted for the Daily Telegraph short story comp), Elizabeth Baines (Salt author of Too Many Magpies, Balancing on the Edge of the World and the forthcoming The Birth Machine) and Salt poet Robert Sheppard. (Robert, Nuala and Elizabeth are pictured here.)

Before the event started, I met up with Salt author Wena Poon. I have only ever met her in exotic locations: Cork, Singapore, Edinburgh and now London. Okay, London may not be exotic to some, but it is to me! We went for a lovely cake and coffee and caught up on her recent trip to Scotland and made arrangements for the launch of her novel Alex y Robert, which is happening at the South Bank Centre on Monday. Here is a short video of Wena being interviewed about it; I’m going to go (you come to; there’s a link here!) and I’m sure it’ll go much better than Wena predicts!:

After the awarding of the prizes, I popped over the road to Foyles to see if that was where a Salt launch was being held. Lee from the Office had taken newly published gorgeous books down on the train that afternoon for Agnieszka Studzinska, David Briggs and Mark Granier, who were holding a joint launch, but it wasn’t at Foyles and I couldn’t for the life of me think where it could be, so I joined the Edge Hill peeps and headed across the road to the Phoenix Club.This is a private members artists club which had a really lovely, relaxed but vibrant atmosphere. Every now and again they would jet dry ice into the room as a special touch. There were photos of actors on the wall and one end of the room was curtained off, probably for VIP members. We’d been there about an hour when I suddenly found myself face to face with Lee from the Office. I wondered if I’d drunk more than I thought, but no, he’d just stepped out from behind the curtain — that was where the launch was taking place!

What a great evening: a host of poets and a gaggle of short story writers! I met David, Mark and Agnieszka for the first time, as well as the familiar friendly faces of Salties Tamar Yoseloff and Katy Evans Bush. Lee and I got back to Cambridge at midnight. Wonderful!