If there were awards for bloody-mindedness, Carl Tighe would have a sackful. At the age of 51, when many established writers are contemplating a lifetime achievement Booker nomination for their next work, Tighe has just found himself on the Whitbread shortlist for his first novel, Burning Worm. And if you reckon that's an achievement, it's nothing in comparison with getting the book published in the first place.

"I sent it out to over 30 publishers," he says with a half-smile. "Every single one rejected it. Some clearly hadn't even bothered to read it, some said they didn't take unagented manuscripts and some said the subject matter (the novel is set in Poland in the early 1980s) was past its sell-by date. The rejection that really hurt the most, though, was a handwritten letter from an editor saying it was the most beautifully written book she had read that year and that she had recommended it for publication only to be overruled by her managing director on the grounds it was uncommercial."

The person who saved the book from the slush pile turned out to be his friend, and former landlady, Madeleine Rose, who also believed in its potential and stumped up £1,000 to have it published under her own imprint, IMPress. "I looked on it as an arts project, rather than an act of charity," she insists. "I loved the book and thought it deserved a wider audience." The audience in question was originally only expected to be 250, as that was the initial print run her budget could stand, along with 50 review copies to be sent out to national and local papers. Predictably, not one review appeared anywhere.

However, Rose did send one copy off to the Whitbread panel on spec. When Tighe heard about this he thought, "That's interesting," and promptly forgot all about it. Until the shortlist was announced. Naturally he now finds it even more interesting as the book begins to pick up notices and a second printing is in hand. But what would he have done if the judges hadn't like the book? "I'd have carried on writing," he replies.

Writing is what Tighe has always done. Even as a kid at junior school in Birmingham he used to write stories, even though everyone, including the teachers, reckoned he was a bit of a weirdo for doing so. "It was outside their experience, I suppose," he explains. He carried on writing through secondary school and did well enough to be accepted to study English at Swansea University. Tighe loved the atmosphere at Swansea - "the 60s lasted all through the 70s in that part of Wales" - but found it difficult to get a job on graduating in 1973.

"I did all sorts of things," he remembers, "from working as a Butlins' redcoat to gutting and cleaning fish. The worst job, though, was working as a lavatory attendant in a mental hospital, though oddly, it was there that I got a phone call inviting me to teach English in Poland. At first, I assumed it was one of the patients winding me up, but it turned out to be true."

Tighe spent the next two years in Wroclaw and Gdansk, where his pupils' command of English was a great deal better than his command of Polish. "I taught myself the language by standing in queues with a dictionary listening to other people's conversations and looking up the words I didn't know," he says. "I didn't always know what we were queuing for, mind, but I learnt to get by."

Apart from one brief spell back in Krakow in the early 80s, Tighe scrabbled a living as a freelance writer in this country selling the odd short story to the radio, writing history books for small imprints and plays for community theatre. The prospect of a regular income drew him back into teaching at the now defunct extra-mural department of Manchester University.

"It was wonderful because everyone on the course was there because they wanted to be," he says. "There were no qualifications or certificates on offer, and the majority of those who came were adults who had signed up for evening classes for the thrill of learning. Everyone was so passionate about what they were doing and the discussions we had were exhilarating."

Tighe now teaches creative writing at Derby University and says that, much as he would love to win the award and get some recognition, it wouldn't change his life that much as he will carry on writing, regardless. Of course.