The Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year Award is an annual award, made possible by the Charlotte Aitken Trust and the Sunday Times. The prize of £10,000 is awarded for a full-length published or self-published (in book or ebook formats) work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry, by a British or Irish author aged 18-35 years. There are prizes of £1,000 for each shortlistee. The winning book will be the work of the most outstanding literary merit.
The Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year Award is currently closed for submissions.
The 2023 Charlotte Aitken Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award Winner
Debut novelist and journalist Tom Crewe has been named winner of the Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year Award for The New Life. The announcement was made at a live ceremony at Brixton’s Canova Hall by Johanna Thomas-Corr, Chief
Literary Critic for The Times and Sunday Times, alongside fellow judges, Booker-winning novelist and critic Anne Enright, novelist
The New Life by Tom Crewe (Chatto & Windus, Vintage)
The New Life is an extraordinarily brave and accomplished debut. Tom Crewe writes as if in
dispatches from 1894, apparently effortlessly, while managing to tell two distinct and intersecting stories
with authority, sensitivity and candor.
— Mendez, 2023 judge
The 2023 Charlotte Aitken Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award Shortlist
Close to Home by Michael Magee (Hamish Hamilton, Penguin Random House UK)
A Flat Place by Noreen Masud (Hamish Hamilton, Penguin Random House, UK)
Bad Diaspora Poems by Momtaza Mehri (Jonathan Cape, Vintage)
- The prize will close on Thursday 14 September 2023
- UK and Irish citizens and those who have been resident in the UK and/or the Republic of Ireland for the three years preceding the award are all eligible.
- The author must be between the ages of 18 and 35 years on 31 December 2023.
- The work submitted must be by one author in the English language.
- The work submitted must have been first published in the UK and/or the Republic of Ireland, in the English language, between 1 November 2022 and 31 October 2023.
- The work submitted must be by a living author.
- Ebooks must be submitted in PDF format.
- Publishers may enter up to two entries per imprint and may provide a written submission for one further title for possible call in.
- Full terms and conditions for entry can be found on the entry form via the Enter Now button above.
For any queries relating to the prize please contact [email protected]
With thanks, the judges of the 2023 Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year Award:
Anne Enright
Anne Enright is one of Ireland’s leading writers. The author of eight novels, two books of short stories and many essays, she is a winner of the Man Booker Prize (2007) and the Irish novel of the year (2007 and 2015). Anne was the first Laureate for Irish Fiction (2015-2018) and she teaches creative writing as Professor of Fiction in UCD. Her new novel The Wren, The Wren is just out.
James McConnachie
James McConnachie is an author and critic. He reviews non-fiction for The Sunday Times and edits The Author, the journal of the Society of Authors. His books include a history of the Kamasutra, The Book of Love, and the Rough Guide to Conspiracy Theories. He is currently writing a biography of a Himalayan mountain.
Mendez
Mendez (they/them) is a London-based novelist and critic. Their debut novel, Rainbow Milk, was published in 2020 and shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize. Their essays and reviews have appeared in the London Review of Books, Poetry Foundation, Attitude and the Guardian. They are currently working on their second novel.
Daljit Nagra
Daljit Nagra MBE is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University, Chair of the Royal Society of Literature, Council of Society of Authors, a PBS New Generation Poet, presenter of the weekly Poetry Extra on Radio 4 Extra. He has published four poetry collections, all with Faber & Faber, which have won the Forward Prize for Best Individual Poem and Best First Book, the South Bank Show Decibel Award and the Cholmondeley Award, and been shortlisted for the Costa Prize and twice for the TS Eliot Prize.
Johanna Thomas-Corr
Johanna Thomas-Corr is the literary editor of The Sunday Times. She has been a reviewer for the paper since 2019 and was previously a contributing writer for the New Statesman. She has written extensively for The Times, the Observer, the Financial Times and the Evening Standard. She judged the Goldsmiths Prize for Fiction in 2021. This is her second year of judging the Young Writer of the Year award.
Catriona Ward
Catriona Ward was born in Washington, DC and grew up in the United States, Kenya, Madagascar, Yemen, and Morocco. Catriona Ward’s fifth novel, Looking Glass Sound was an immediate USA Today bestseller. Her fourth novel, the gothic thriller Sundial won the International Thriller Writers Association Award for best novel. Ward’s third breakout novel The Last House on Needless Street won the August Derleth Prize. It is being developed for film by Andy Serkis’s production company. Ward’s second novel Little Eve and debut novel The Girl from Rawblood also won the August Derleth Prize, making Ward the only woman to have won the prize three times.
2023:
Tom Crewe for The New Life (Chatto & Windus, Vintage)
Shortlisted:
Michael Magee for Close to Home (Hamish Hamilton, Penguin Random House UK)
Noreen Masud for A Flat Place (Hamish Hamilton, Penguin Random House, UK)
Momtaza Mehri for Bad Diaspora Poems (Jonathan Cape, Vintage)
2022
Winner:
Tom Benn for Oxblood (Bloomsbury)
Shortlisted:
Lucy Burns for Larger than an Orange (Chatto & Windus)
Maddie Mortimer for Maps of our Spectacular Bodies (Picador)
Katherine Rundell for Super-Infinite (Faber & Faber)
2021
Winner:
Cal Flyn for Islands of Abandonment (HarperCollins)
Shortlisted:
Anna Beecher for Here Comes the Miracle (Orion)
Rachel Long for My Darling from the Lions (Picador)
Caleb Azumah Nelson for Open Water (Penguin Random House)
Megan Nolan for Acts of Desperation (Jonathan Cape)
2020
Winner:
Jay Bernard for Surge (Chatto & Windus)
Shortlisted:
Catherine Cho for Inferno (Bloomsbury)
Seán Hewitt for Tongues of Fire (Penguin Books)
Marina Kemp for Nightingale (HarperCollins)
2019
Winner:
Raymond Antrobus for The Perseverance (Penned in the Margins)
Shortlisted:
Julia Armfield for Salt Slow (Picador)
Yara Rodrigues Fowler for Stubborn Archivist (Fleet, Little, Brown)
Kim Sherwood for Testament (Quercus)
2018
Winner:
Adam Weymouth for Kings of the Yukon (Particular Books)
Shortlisted:
Fiona Mozley for Elmet (John Murray)
Laura Freeman for The Reading Cure (W&N)
Imogen Hermes Gowar for The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock (Vintage)
2017
Winner:
Sally Rooney for Conversations with Friends (Faber & Faber)
Shortlisted:
Julianne Pachico for The Lucky Ones (Faber & Faber)
Claire North for The End of the Day (Orbit)
Sara Taylor for The Lauras (Windmill Books)
Minoo Dinshaw for Outlandish Knight: The Byzantine Life of Steven Runciman (Allen Lane)
2016
Winner:
Max Porter for Grief is the Thing with Feathers (Faber & Faber)
Shortlisted:
Andrew McMillan for physical (Jonathan Cape)
Jessie Greengrass for An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to One Who Saw It (JM Originals)
Benjamin Wood for The Ecliptic (Scribner)
2015
Winner:
Sarah Howe for Loop of Jade (Chatto & Windus)
Her book of poetry was also awarded the T.S. Eliot Prize.
Shortlisted:
Ben Fergusson for The Spring of Kasper Meier (Abacus)
Sunjeev Sahota for The Year of the Runaways (Picador)
Sara Taylor for The Shore (Windmill Books)
2009 Winner – Ross Raisin for God’s Own Country (Penguin)
His novel was also awarded a Betty Trask Award in 2008.
2008 Adam Foulds for The Truth about These Strange Times (Weidenfeld)
2007 Naomi Alderman for Disobedience (Viking)
2004 Robert Macfarlane for Mountains of the Mind (Granta)
2003 William Fiennes for The Snow Geese (Granta)
2001 Zadie Smith for White Teeth (Hamish Hamilton)
2000 Sarah Waters for Affinity (Little, Brown)
1999 Paul Farley for The Boy from the Chemist is Here to See You (Macmillan)
1998 Patrick French for Liberty or Death (HarperCollins)
1997 Francis Spufford for I May Be Some Time (Faber & Faber)
1996 Katherine Pierpoint for Truffle Beds (Faber & Faber)
1995 Andrew Cowan for Pig (Michael Joseph)
1994 William Dalrymple for City of Djinns (HarperCollins)
1993 Simon Armitage for Kid (Faber & Faber)
1992 Caryl Phillips for Cambridge (Bloomsbury)
1991 Helen Simpson for Four Bare Legs in a Bed (Heinemann)