A WOMAN from Ilkley has won a prestigious award for an account of her mother's story of growing up in Nigeria.

Mandy Sutter picked up the New Welsh Writing Awards 2016: University of South Wales Prize for Travel Writing.

New Welsh Review, in association with the University of South Wales and CADCentre, announced her success at a ceremony at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama in Cardiff last Thursday. (July 7)

The judges were New Welsh Review editor Gwen Davies and travel writer Rory MacLean.

Mandy's book, called Bush Meat: As My Mother Told Me, re-tells the experiences of her mother in Nigeria during the 1960s.

Mandy was given a cheque for £1,000 by Mr MacLean.

Her winning entry will be published by New Welsh Review on their New Welsh Rarebyte imprint this autumn, and will also receive a positive critique by leading literary agent Cathryn Summerhayes at WME.

Ms Davies said "Travel writing creates bridges of understanding across physical and imaginative borders, between our own and 'other' cultures as well as between the past and the present.

"Mandy Sutter's use of fiction techniques such as empathy and multiple viewpoints, especially her mother's adult experience as an ex-pat negotiating her own family's conforming views of race and class, create a complete arc of innovative concision."

Co-judge Mr MacLean said: "Mandy Sutter's 'Bush Meat' triumphs in its lean prose and true dialogue, in its disarming humour and in its evocation of a family divided by sexism and racism.

"In her story, Mandy stitches together the threads of memory to create a moving tapestry of lost life, building bridges of understanding across time and place."

Mandy grew up in Kent but now lives in Ilkley with her partner.

She has previously co-written two books about the lives of Somali women, published in 2006 and 2007 and her first novel, Stretching It, was published in 2013.