A FORMER Tavistock College student is celebrating literary success, after scooping the 'best unpublished novelist' award at the Brit Writers' Awards 2011, due to be televised next month.

Anna Mendham, 37, who lives at Weir Quay, said winning the award was 'amazing' and had made the last seven years of hard work worthwhile.

She said: 'I felt a huge sense of relief, it's been such a long journey. It was like an oasis after travelling through a long desert. It was getting to the stage where people were embarrassed to ask me how it was going, but now, things are all falling into place.

'It seems as though the book will be published next year, which is so exciting.'

Anna's book 'Dog Rose' was described as 'a great story', 'a real toffee of a tale' and 'the kind of book you hunker down under the duvet with and read in one night'.

Set in the 17th century, Dog Rose is the story of how Britain's poor were coerced and kidnapped into going to Barbados — a tale of aristocrats liberated from the gaze of polite society, an historically accurate account of how innocent men and women were forged into pirates.

Anna said the inspiration for the book came from a discussion with her father about Sir Francis Drake.

She said: 'I never really appreciated that he was a pirate, but my imagination was fired by it, and I started reading more about it.'

She has been working in a variety of part-time jobs to finance her writing passion, and performing poetry at festivals.

'The festivals are great in terms of acknowledgement but not really in terms of commercial viability,' said Anna.

'When you embark on a vast, potentially unrewarded project like writing a novel, you need to be brave.  The majority of people around you deem you crazy for not channeling your energy into something more lucrative.  But sometimes it pays to ignore the nay sayers and simply follow your heart.'

Anna is now working with top London agent Lizzy Kremer on the finishing touches to the novel, which she hopes should be on shop shelves before Christmas next year.

'It will be amazing to see it — it was incredible enough just winning the prize — I think when it comes out I will probably sleep with it for a month!' she said.

RIGHT:?Anna receives her award from Jaz Eal, chief executive officer of Brit?Asia TV.