The Edge Hill Prize is a prestigious literary award, bestowed annually on the author of
a published short story collection from the UK or Ireland. In addition to the £5000 first prize,
the winning author receives a specially commissioned artwork, sponsored by
Blackwell bookshops. Pete Clarke was selected from proposals from North West artists for
this year’s prize, which will be awarded at The Bluecoat, Liverpool on July 4th 2009.

• Please consult our website www.edgehill.ac.uk/shortstory for more on the Edge Hill Prize,
the short story and prize-winning authors.

                                          Invisible Cities: Commissioned Painting by Pete Clarke.

Pete Clarke’s work explores visual narratives influenced as much by contemporary literature as by contemporary art which makes this an appropriate artist for the commissioned prize for a short story writer. He has selected composite images of an imagined city, a building that represents metaphorically the idea of a shell, an empty container of possible associations.
The constructed framed painting juxtaposes images and related poetic text from ‘Invisible Cities’ by Italio Calvino.





Calvino’s narrative explores imagination and the imaginable through the descriptions of cities by the explorer Marco Polo in a conversation with the aging emperor Kublai Khan.
The majority of the book consists of brief prose poems describing cities and short dialogues between the two characters to discuss various ideas presented by the cities on a wide range of topics including linguistics and human nature.