A FIRST-TIME author has been shortlisted for one of fiction’s most prestigious awards.

Amy Arnold, of Windermere, was working on a PhD in Neuropsychology when she began writing her first book, Slip of a Fish.

After entering her finished manuscript into a competition Mrs Arnold not only won a publishing contract but was awarded the Northern Book Prize in 2018.

This year her debut novel has been shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize, one of fiction’s most celebrated accolades, alongside the Booker Prize.

Mrs Arnold, a former secondary school music teacher, joins five other authors, including British playwright and poet Deborah Levy, Lucy Ellman-both also nominated for Booker Prize-as well as Mark Haddon, best known for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

The Windermere author’s book has so far been featured in The Guardian and The Times Literary Supplement.

Ash is the narrator and the book’s main character.

She collects words, climbs tress and swims in a deserted lake with her beloved seven-year-old daughter, Charlie.

In the book Ash is bemused by everyday life. Over the course of a relentlessly hot summer, her daughter begins to pull away and in a desperate attempt to reconnect with Charlie Ash does something truly unforgivable.

As the gulf between them grows, Ash’s life begins to slip out of her hold.

The university psychology lecturer didn’t write the book with the intention of getting it published, her aim was simply to write something that she would want to read.

On never intending to publish the book Mrs Arnold said: “Looking back, I realise this allowed me to write with absolute freedom.

“A freedom that’s difficult to reclaim once your work is out in the world”.

The Winner of the Goldsmiths Prize will be announced at an event on 13th November.