Ullapool writer on holiday in Italy when exciting award news arrives
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A writer who now lives in Ullapool has been awarded the People’s Book Prize special award.
"I was on holiday in Italy and out for a meal in Verona. I never normally carry my phone with me going out, but I'd brought it and got a text message," Stephen Keeler said.
"I half-heartedly left my pie to see the message – and found I had won this award!
"I was delighted and I'm happy for the book, it's like a family member!"
Stephen, who was born in the north-east of England and spent some years working in education in Sweden and China, has won the award with his non-fiction book 50 Words For Love In Swedish.
The aim of the People's Book Awards is to “get the nation reading and honour authors and publishers voted by the public”.
Stephen's book is subtitled “A memoir in fragments of a foreign language”.
It is made up of short pieces remembering Swedish words – such as ‘bastu – sauna’ – and the memories and impressions attached to them from a time when the writer first arrived in Sweden as a young teacher in the 70s.
Stephen writes near the end of the book: “When I decided to write this love letter to Sweden I did not imagine that so many of my fifty words would be for or closely associated with food…”
Words include everything from ‘osthyvel’ – cheese slice to ‘korv’ – hot dog – with many random items such as Bjorn Borg along the way.
Near the end he gets to the more abstract word ‘Lagom’ which means ‘Moderate just right, not too much and not too little’, a word that sums up for Stephen the Swedish attitude to living well.
Stephen met his late wife Yvonne during his time in Sweden. After her death, he moved in 2010 from his London base to Ullapool to write full-time.
He has received a Scottish Book Trust New Writing Award and his poetry has been published in magazines, anthologies and has been shortlisted for some prestigious poetry competitions.
Stephen won The Beryl Bainbridge First-Time Author Award, named after the awards’ founding patron.
50 Words For Love In Swedish by Stephen Keeler (Archetype Books, £8.99) is out now.
