Nicola Griffith has today (29 June) won the inaugural ADCI (Authors with Disabilities and Chronic Illnesses) Literary Prize, for Spear (Tordotcom Publishing), a lyrical, queer reimagining of Arthurian legend, in which ‘those usually airbrushed from history take centre stage’ (ADCI Literary Prize judge Penny Batchelor).
The prize, launched in 2022 to encourage greater positive representation of disability in literature, was announced alongside ten other prizes which make up the annual Society of Authors’ Awards. The SoA Awards is the UK’s biggest literary prize fund, worth over £100,000, this year shared between 30 writers, poets and illustrators.
The winners, featuring authors at all stages of their careers – from debut poets and novelists to well-established writers – will be celebrated this evening at the Society of Authors’ Awards ceremony at Southwark Cathedral, generously sponsored by the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS).
The ceremony, presented by Joanne Harris with a keynote from Val McDermid to an audience of over 300 winners, judges and other authors, will be livestreamed from 7PM.
Poet Jay Gao wins both an Eric Gregory Award and a Somerset Maugham Award this year for his thrilling debut collection, Imperium (Carcanet Press). Through reimagined episodes from Homer’s Odyssey, Imperium asks questions about diaspora and how past lives permeate the present. It was described by judge Wayne Holloway Smith as ‘the work of a poet mind shot through with intellect and cultural capital’.
Other winners include Daniel Wiles, who wins the Betty Trask Prize for Mercia’s Take (Swift Press), a brutal portrayal of life as a 19th century miner and of a world wreaked by the exploitation that fed the British empire. Nibbies Debut Novel of the Year Trespasses (Bloomsbury Publishing), by Louise Kennedy, was selected as winner of the McKitterick Prize, ‘an intelligent, delicately told tale of love under military rule’ (Selma Dabbagh).
The powerful, ‘urgent and moving’ memoir None of The Above: Reflections on Life Beyond the Binary (Canongate Books) by Travis Alabanza was a Somerset Maugham winner this year – a ‘testimony to the vicissitudes of living as a non-binary person of colour in modern Britain’ (Somerset Maugham judge Ardashir Vakil).
Speaking about the Awards, keynote speaker Val McDermid said:
Awarded by authors, for authors, the SoA Awards hold a special place in the literary calendar. It is vital that we celebrate the work authors do to help us find meaning in tumultuous times, now more than ever. This year’s winners make that task easy. They have given us a plethora of riches: from sweeping novels, to searching poetry, to first works by exciting authors at the start of new careers. I hope each win fuels that joy of words that first gave birth to these many and various works.
Somerset Maugham and Eric Gregory Award winner Jay Gao said:
It’s always an incredible feeling to know that one’s writing has been read with care and generosity, especially by the poets and writers who regularly inspire my own work. It really means a lot to be recognised as a small part of this broad and diverse creative community being celebrated through the Society of Authors. This support is important for me as, more than anything else, I know it will encourage me to keep writing.
The winners for each award are:
The ADCI Literary Prize
Sponsored by Arts Council England, ALCS, the Drusilla Harvey Memorial Fund, and the Professional Writing Academy, the ADCI Literary Prize is awarded to a disabled or chronically ill writer, for an outstanding novel containing a disabled or chronically ill character or characters. Judged by Penny Batchelor, Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, Nydia Hebden, Karl Knights, Julia Lund, Nii Ayikwei Parkes, Vikki Patis and Chloe Timms.
Total prize fund: £2,000
THE ADCI LITERARY PRIZE WINNER: NICOLA GRIFFITH FOR SPEAR (TORDOTCOM PUBLISHING) AWARDED £1,250
Nicola Griffith (she/her) is a dual UK/US citizen living in Seattle. She is the author of seven award-winning novels, including Hild and Ammonite, and her shorter work has appeared in Nature, New Scientist, The New York Times, etc. She is the founder and co-host of #CripLit, holds a PhD from Anglia Ruskin University, and enjoys a ferocious bout of wheelchair boxing. She is married to novelist and screenwriter Kelley Eskridge.
ADCI Literary Prize judge Rowan Hisayo Buchanan said:
I was hugely impressed by this work. There is real ambition and fluidity to the writing. It represents a vast amount of research and yet it wears that research lightly. While there was much recognizable to anyone with a glancing knowledge of Arthurian legend, there was also much that felt new. Griffith combines pre-existing myths in inventive and delightful ways. The representation in this story is joyful – acknowledging what might cause a character to be seen as other but finding no shame in it.
THE ADCI LITERARY PRIZE RUNNER-UP: FIONA SCOTT-BARRETT FOR THE EXIT FACILITY (SELF PUBLISHED) AWARDED £750
Fiona Scott-Barrett was in her twenties when she was diagnosed as having Best disease, a degenerative eye condition that leads to the gradual loss of central vision. After an internationally successful career as an author of textbooks for students of English as a Foreign Language, Fiona returned to the UK and took up writing fiction. The Exit Facility, which features a heroine with Best disease, is her debut novel. Fiona is currently working on her second novel, which is inspired by her time living on the island of Crete, and is attending a short course in experimental writing at the University of Edinburgh. She has been a member of the Society of Authors since 1996.
ALCS Tom-Gallon Trust Award
Sponsored by the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) and Hawthornden Foundation, the ALCS Tom-Gallon Trust Award is awarded for a short story by a writer who has had at least one short story accepted for publication. Judged by Claire Fuller, Sophie Haydock, Billy Kahora and Mary Watson.
Total prize fund: £5,000
THE ALCS TOM-GALLON TRUST AWARD WINNER: CIARÁN FOLAN FOR ‘A DAY’, AWARDED £2,000
Ciarán Folan has had stories published in The Dublin Review, The London Magazine, Prole and with The Stinging Fly online. He won the RTÉ Francis MacManus Short Story Competition twice and was a runner up for the Michael McLaverty Short Story Award in 2016 and 2018. He was shortlisted for the V S Pritchett Short Story Prize in 2020.
ALCS Tom-Gallon Trust Award judge Claire Fuller said:
Our winning story drew me in from the very beginning, and then looped the idea of time over and under and over again so cleverly that I was never lost but felt I knew everything I needed to know about these characters and their situation. With its beautiful melancholic tone, ‘A Day’ by Ciaran Folan is storytelling at its very best.
THE ALCS TOM-GALLON TRUST AWARD RUNNER-UP: KAREN STEVENS FOR ‘AMONG THE CROWS’, AWARDED £1,000
Karen Stevens is a writer and lecturer in creative writing at the University of Chichester, West Sussex. Her short stories have been published in The Big Issue, Pulp Net, Panurge New Fiction, Mouth Ogres, Dreaming Beasts, Fish Publishing, Riptide, Salt Publishing and Valley Press. Her edited collection of essays, Writing a First Novel: Reflections on the Journey, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2014. Her edited collection of short stories High Spirits: A Round of Drinking Stories was published by Valley Press in 2018 and won the Saboteur Award for Best Anthology 2019, and was chosen for the Summer Recess Reading List for Parliamentarians.
Shortlistees Joe Bedford, Kerry Hood, Niamh Mac Cabe and Lishani Ramanayake each received £500.
Betty Trask Prize
The Betty Trask Prize is presented for a first novel by a writer under 35. Judged by Sara Collins, Michael Donkor and Alex Preston.
Total prize fund: £26,200
THE BETTY TRASK PRIZE WINNER: DANIEL WILES FOR MERCIA’S TAKE (SWIFT PRESS) AWARDED £10,000
Daniel Wiles is from Walsall in the West Midlands. He recently completed the Prose MA at UEA, where he was the recipient of the Booker Prize Foundation Scholarship. Mercia’s Take is his first novel.
Betty Trask Prize judge Michael Donkor said:
Mercia’s Take is an extraordinary debut. Simultaneously intimate and epic, it tracks the journey of one man’s voyage through the 19th century Black Country, to right injustices both personal and political, with a compassion that is never cloying. Wiles is a master stylist: in this debut, each sentence is as dark and tough as the coal our protagonist mines each day. Characters – even those who are seemingly peripheral – have voices that ring with earthy credibility. Wiles’ evocation of the landscape is stunning too, often showing the sublimity that can exist alongside struggle. With a thrillingly pacy plot and immaculately crystalline expression, this is a very special debut indeed.
Cholmondeley Awards
Six winners each awarded £1,400
The Cholmondeley Awards are awarded for a body of work by a poet and contribution to poetry. Judged by Moniza Alvi, Hannah Lowe, Drew Milne and Deryn Rees-Jones.
Total prize fund: £8,400.
The winners are Caroline Bird, Jane Draycott, Greta Stoddart, Michael Symmons Roberts, Jackie Wills and Tamar Yoseloff.
Cholmondeley Awards judge Moniza Alvi said:
The Cholmondeley Awards have been, since they were introduced in 1966, important honorary awards that recognise poets’ sustained excellence across a body of work. Some of the recipients will already be well-known in the poetry world, while others may be deserving of wider recognition for the distinction of their writing. Many of them will have contributed to the genre in a variety of ways, through their performances and tutoring, for example. The Cholmondeley Awards prove that excellence can be perceived across a wide range of poetry from a diversity of poets. It is hoped that the recipients will feel valued, encouraged and truly celebrated.
Caroline Bird is a poet and playwright. Her sixth collection, The Air Year, won the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2020 and was shortlisted for the Polari Prize and the Costa Prize. Her fifth collection, In These Days of Prohibition, was shortlisted for the 2017 TS Eliot Prize and the Ted Hughes Award. She won an Eric Gregory Award in 2002 and was shortlisted for the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize in 2001 and the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2008 and 2010. She was one of the five official poets at the 2012 London Olympics. As a playwright, Bird has been shortlisted for the George Devine Award and the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Her Selected Poems, Rookie, was published in May.
Jane Draycott’s new collection The Kingdom follows seven earlier publications including The Occupant, Over (T S Eliot Prize shortlist), Prince Rupert’s Drop (Forward Prize shortlist), Storms Under the Skin (Henri Michaux translations), and her award-winning translation of the 14th-century Pearl. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Greta Stoddart‘s four books (Anvil, Bloodaxe) have won or been shortlisted for the Geoffrey Faber, Forward, Roehampton and Costa poetry awards. A long radio poem ‘Who’s there?’ was BBC Pick of the Week and shortlisted for the 2017 Ted Hughes Award. She was shortlisted for the 2021 Bridport Short Story Award and longlisted for the 2022 BBC Short Story Award. She lives in Devon and teaches for the Poetry School.
Michael Symmons Roberts’ poetry has won the Forward Prize, the Costa Poetry Prize and the Whitbread Poetry Award, and been shortlisted for the Griffin International Poetry Prize and the T.S. Eliot Prize. He is also a librettist and broadcaster and Professor of Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University. His 8th poetry collection – Ransom – was published by Cape in March 2021.
Jackie Wills‘ most recent poetry collection is A Friable Earth (Arc Publications 2019). She’s published five earlier collections and was shortlisted for the 1995 TS Eliot prize. She’s been a journalist, Royal Literary Fund Fellow and reflects on a lifetime of reading and writing in On Poetry (Smith Doorstop 2022). https://jackiewillspoetry.blogspot.com/
Tamar Yoseloff’s seventh collection, Belief Systems, is due from Nine Arches Press in Summer 2024. She’s also the author of Formerly (with photographs by Vici MacDonald), shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award, and collaborative editions with artists Linda Karshan and Charlotte Harker respectively. She has taught as a lecturer on the Poetry School / Newcastle University MA in Writing Poetry and for various museums and galleries, including the Royal Academy and the Hayward.
Eric Gregory Awards
Six winners each awarded £4,725
The Eric Gregory Award is presented for a collection of poems by a poet under 30. Judged by Raymond Antrobus, Eric Ngalle Charles, Wayne Holloway-Smith, Sarah Howe, Gwyneth Lewis and Joelle Taylor.
Total prize fund: £28,350
The winners are Princess Arinola Adegbite, Jay Gao, Charlotte Shevchenko Knight, Mukahang Limbu, Momtaza Mehri and Helen Quah.
Eric Gregory Awards judge Wayne Holloway Smith said:
It was a huge pleasure to be confronted by a varied and talented shortlist in this year’s awards. What this suggested for me was a new cohort of emerging voices with a keen sense of what’s at stake in this cultural moment, a willingness to engage with troubling and complex subject areas, and a largely self-reflexive capacity to interrogate the self. My own imagination and proficiency as a reader was stretched again and again.
P.A.Bitez or Princess Arinola Adegbite is a multi-award-winning artist, poet, musician, actress, and laureled filmmaker from Manchester. She is a winner of Slambassadors 2017, BBC Words First 2020, One Mic Stand 2021, Common Word Going Digital 2021, and Manchester Creative of The Year 2021. Since graduating she has been awarded a Castlefield Gallery Associates prize for her film ‘Drapetomania’ a poetic commentary on race and gender in 2022. Her poems have been published by AUB International Poetry Prize, Poetry Society, New Writing North, Arachne Press, AIU Centre and Sick Festival. She is an active member of Young Identity and has completed African Writers Trust/New Writing North Digital Residency. Bitez is a Youth Music, Turtle Bay and Factory International (MIF) funded Artist. Bitez has been commissioned by Manchester International Festival, Selfridges, BBC, University of Cambridge, Ripples of Hope Festival, British Triathlon, AIU Centre, Home Theatre, Contact Theatre and many more.
Jay Gao is a poet and author of Imperium (Carcanet, 2022) plus three poetry pamphlets. He is a Contributing Editor at The White Review. He is a winner of the 2022 Desperate Literature Prize for Short Fiction, the 2021 London Magazine Poetry Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2022 Edwin Morgan Poetry Award. Originally from Edinburgh, Scotland, he earned his MFA at Brown University and is a PhD student at Columbia University in New York City.
Charlotte Shevchenko Knight is a British-Ukrainian poet. She was a winner of the New Poets Prize with her pamphlet Ways of Healing, which was published by The Poetry Business in 2022. Her debut full-length collection Food for the Dead is forthcoming with Jonathan Cape in February 2024. Shevchenko Knight is a Creative Writing PhD candidate at Manchester Metropolitan University and is based in York.
Mukahang Limbu is a Nepalese writer based in Oxford. A three-time Foyle Young Poet, and winner of the Outspoken prize, he has been published in England: Poems from a School (Picador, 2018) and Nascent. He has been longlisted in the National Poetry Competition and shortlisted for the Forward Prize.
Momtaza Mehri is a poet and independent researcher working across criticism, translation, anti-disciplinary research practices, education, and radio. She is a former Young People’s Poet Laureate for London and Frontier-Antioch Fellow at Antioch University (Los Angeles). Her writing has appeared in the likes of POETRY, Granta, Vogue, the Guardian, Bidoun and The White Review. A former Columnist-in-Residence at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s Open Space, she has also completed residencies at St. Paul’s Cathedral and the British Library.
Helen Quah (she/her) is a British writer. Her poetry has been published in journals such as Aesthetica Magazine, bath magg and The Poetry Review. Her sequence poem ‘When I Marry A White Man’ won third prize in the Verve Poetry Competition 2022 and she was long-listed for the 2023 National Poetry Competition. Her debut pamphlet Dog Woman was published by Out-Spoken Press in June 2022. She currently works as a junior doctor in London.
Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize
The Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize is awarded to a UK or Irish writer, or a writer currently resident in those countries, for a novel focusing on the experience of travel away from home. In memory of Malcolm Lowry and endowed by Gordon Bowker, his biographer, and Ramdei Bowker. Judged by Aamer Hussein, Zeba Talkhani and Kerry Young.
Total prize fund: £2,750
THE GORDON BOWKER VOLCANO PRIZE WINNER: AAMINA AHMAD FOR THE RETURN OF FARAZ ALI (SCEPTRE, HODDER & STOUGHTON) AWARDED £2,000
Aamina Ahmad was born and raised in London, where she worked for BBC Drama and other independent television companies as a script editor. Her play The Dishonoured was produced by Kali Theatre Company in 2016. She has an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is a recipient of a Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University, a Pushcart Prize and a Rona Jaffe Writers Award. Her short fiction has appeared in journals including One Story, the Southern Review and Ecotone. She teaches creative writing at the University of Minnesota.
Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize judge Aamer Hussein said:
In her ambitious and accomplished first novel, Aamina Ahmad chronicles the lives of her protagonist and his fragmented family against a backdrop of wars, divided nations, and turbulent national and international histories. Spanning several decades, this is a skilfully crafted evocation of place, time and memory, at the meeting point of private tragedy and public turmoil.
THE GORDON BOWKER VOLCANO PRIZE RUNNER-UP: DAVID PARK FOR SPIES IN CANAAN (BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING) AWARDED £750
David Park has written nine novels and two collections of short stories. His novel Travelling in a Strange Land won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year. His other books include The Light of Amsterdam, which was shortlisted for the 2014 International IMPAC Prize and The Poets’ Wives, which was selected as Belfast’s Choice for One City One Book 2014. He has won the Authors’ Club First Novel Award, the Bass Ireland Arts Award for Literature, the Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize and the American Ireland Fund Literary Award. He has received a Major Individual Artist Award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and been shortlisted for the Irish Novel of the Year Award four times. In 2014 he was longlisted for the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award. He lives in County Down, Northern Ireland.
McKitterick Prize
Sponsored by the Hawthornden Foundation, the McKitterick Prize is awarded for a first novel by a writer over 40. Judged by Selma Dabbagh, Rebecca Foster, Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott, Anietie Isong, and Nick Rennison.
Total prize fund: £10,000
THE MCKITTERICK PRIZE WINNER: LOUISE KENNEDY FOR TRESPASSES (BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING) AWARDED £4,000
Louise Kennedy grew up a few miles from Belfast. She is the author of the Women’s Prize shortlisted novel, Trespasses, and the acclaimed short story collection, The End of the World is a Cul de Sac, and is the only woman to have been shortlisted twice for the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award (2019 and 2020). Before starting her writing career, she spent nearly thirty years working as a chef. She lives in Sligo.
McKitterick Prize judge Selma Dabbagh said:
An intelligent, delicately told tale of love under military rule where allegiances and vulnerabilities shift from one scene to the next, as a mis-matched couple lunge towards each other with desire. Told against a backdrop of ruined dreams, alcoholism and discoloured food, Trespasses is a unique account of a period British and Irish history of systematic oppression, challenged loyalties, criminality, alienation and bloodshed.
THE MCKITTERICK PRIZE RUNNER-UP: LIZ HYDER FOR THE GIFTS (MANILLA PRESS, BONNIER BOOKS UK) AWARDED £2,000
Liz Hyder has been making up stories for as long she can remember. She has a BA in Drama from the University of Bristol and, in early 2018, won the Bridge Award/Moniack Mhor Emerging Writer Award. Bearmouth, her debut young adult novel, won a Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, the Branford Boase Award and was chosen as the Children’s Book of the Year by The Times. Originally from London, she now lives in South Shropshire. The Gifts is her debut adult novel.
Shortlistees Ayanna Lloyd Banwo, Liz Hyder, Joanna Quinn and Taymour Soomro each received £1,000
Paul Torday Memorial Prize
Sponsored by the Hawthornden Foundation, the Paul Torday Memorial Prize is awarded to a first novel by a writer over 60. The prize includes a set of the collected works of British writer Paul Torday, who published his first novel Salmon Fishing in the Yemen at the age of 60. It is indebted to Weidenfeld & Nicolson Fiction for generously providing these books. Judged by Rasheda Ashanti Malcolm, Kathy O’Shaughnessy and Andrew Taylor.
Total prize fund: £4,000
THE PAUL TORDAY MEMORIAL PRIZE WINNER: BONNIE GARMUS FOR LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY (DOUBLEDAY, PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE) AWARDED £3,000
Bonnie Garmus is a copywriter and creative director who has worked widely in the fields of technology, medicine, and education. She is an open-water swimmer, a rower, and mother to two wonderful daughters. Born in California and most recently from Seattle, she currently lives in London with her husband and her dog, 99. Her first novel, Lessons in Chemistry is a No.1 Sunday Times, New York Times and international bestseller. It has been translated into over forty territories and is being adapted as an Apple TV series starring Brie Larson.
Paul Torday Memorial Prize judge Andrew Taylor said:
It’s difficult to believe that Lessons in Chemistry is Bonnie Garmus’s first novel. Her central character, Elizabeth Zott, springs off the page and confronts us with such wit and authority that she seems always to have existed somewhere between Southern California and the land of wishful thinking. Zott takes the starring role in this delicious tale of the proto-feminist revenge.
PAUL TORDAY MEMORIAL PRIZE RUNNER-UP: JULIE OWEN MOYLAN FOR THAT GREEN EYED GIRL (MICHAEL JOSEPH, PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE) AWARDED £1,000
Julie Owen Moylan was born in Cardiff and has worked in a variety of jobs from trainee hairdresser and chip shop attendant at sixteen to business management consultant and college lecturer in her thirties. She then returned to education to complete her Master’s degree in Film before going on to complete a further Master’s degree in Creative Writing. Julie is an alumna of the Faber Academy’s Writing a Novel course. She lives in Cardiff with her husband and two cats. Her debut novel, That Green Eyed Girl, received widespread critical acclaim. Her second novel, 73 Dove Street, will publish in Hardback in July 2023.
Queen’s Knickers Award
Sponsored by its founder Nicholas Allan, the Queen’s Knickers Award is an annual prize for an outstanding children’s original illustrated book for ages 0-7. It recognises books that strike a quirky, new note and grab the attention of a child, whether in the form of curiosity, amusement, horror or excitement. Judged by Smriti Halls, Sarah McIntyre and Ken Wilson- Max.
Total prize fund: £6,000
QUEEN’S KNICKERS AWARD WINNER: OLAF FALAFEL FOR BLOBFISH (WALKER BOOKS LTD) AWARDED £5,000
Olaf Falafel is an award-winning comedian, children’s author and illustrator. In 2020, Olaf started Art Club – a YouTube series packed with jokes, how-to-draw tutorials, technical tips and tricks as well as a few fantastically silly songs. Olaf’s recent books include Unleash Your Creative Monster: A Children’s Guide to Writing written by Andy Jones, with lashings of Olaf’s jokes and bright and bold illustrations. Olaf lives in Bedfordshire; find out more about his work at www.olaffalafel.com
Queen’s Knickers Award judge Sarah McIntyre said:
I loved the way Olaf Falafel combined a simple cartooning style with texture and magic underwater lighting that occasionally gave the goofy story and character brief touches of the sublime. His varied page layouts paced the story beautifully, enlivened by gentle jokes. As judges, we all liked the way the story had an environmental message about keeping our beaches clean, but we appreciated how it didn’t do it in a way that would make children feel sad and helpless. Rather, it showed people on the beach doing the right thing, naturally tidying up and being helpful, in a simple, concrete way that children could immediately put into practice. I love how simple Olaf has made his main character to draw: I hope children will be inspired to write and draw the further comic adventures of Blobfish!
QUEEN’S KNICKERS AWARD RUNNER-UP: JOHN AGARD & ILLUSTRATOR SATOSHI KITAMURA FOR WHEN CREATURE MET CREATURE (SCALLYWAG PRESS)
John Agard is a poet, performer and anthologist. He was born in Guyana and came to Britain in 1977. He was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry and the Eleanor Farjeon Award and currently lives in Lewes, East Sussex.
Satoshi Kitamura has created over 20 picture books and illustrated many more. He has won awards such as the Mother Goose Award, Silver Award for the Smarties Prize, and the National Art Library Illustrations Award and has been shortlisted for the BookTrust Storytime Prize.
Somerset Maugham Awards
Six winners each awarded £2,700
The Somerset Maugham Awards are for published works of fiction, non-fiction or poetry by writers under 30, to enable them to enrich their work by gaining experience of foreign countries. Judged by Fred D’Aguiar, Ardashir Vakil and Roseanne Watt.
Total prize fund: £16,200
The winners are Travis Alabanza, Sussie Anie, Mya-Rose Craig, Jay Gao, Gurnaik Johal and Moses McKenzie.
Somerset Maugham Awards judge Fred D’Aguair said:
This year’s submissions were strong. All the entries spoke to us with eloquence and power. The range of work in terms of subject and writers testify to the wealth of books published and the healthy numbers of writers who answer the call of these times of strife and need. The intersections between the so-called genres of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, made reading the many entries both challenging and rewarding. The Somerset Maugham internationalises the idea of how writers work and why readers need to read their books.
Travis Alabanza is an award-winning writer, performer and theatre maker. After being the youngest recipient of the Artist-in-Residency programme at Tate Galleries, Alabanza’s debut show Burgerz toured internationally to sold-out performances in the Southbank Centre, Sao Paulo, Brazil, and HAU, Berlin, and won the Edinburgh Fringe Total Theatre Award. In 2020, their theatre show ‘Overflow’ debuted at the Bush Theatre to widespread acclaim and later streamed online in over 20 countries. Their recent play ‘Sound of The Underground’ was awarded 5 stars in the Guardian after its Royal Court Theatre run. In 2022 they released their debut book, None of The Above, with Canongate.
Sussie Anie is a British-Ghanaian writer, born in London in 1994. Her writing has been published in Lolwe and was shortlisted for the 2020 White Review Short Story Prize. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia, where she was the recipient of the 2018-19 Kowitz Scholarship. Her debut novel To Fill a Yellow House was longlisted for the 2023 Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award.
Mya-Rose Craig, also known as Birdgirl, is a 20-year-old British-Bangladeshi birder, environmentalist and diversity activist. She campaigns for equal access to nature and to end the climate and biodiversity loss crises, issues that she believes are intrinsically linked, whilst promoting Global Climate Justice. She is an Ambassador for Survival International and fights for the rights of indigenous peoples; she has previously written a book amplifying their voices. At the age of 14 she founded Black2Nature to engage minority ethnic teenagers with nature and at 17 she became the youngest Briton to receive an honorary Doctorate, awarded by Bristol University for this pioneering work. Also at 17, she became the youngest person to see half the world’s bird species and shared a stage with Greta Thunberg, speaking to 40,000 protestors. In September 2020, she held the world’s most northerly Youth Strike, travelling with Greenpeace, for whom she is an Oceans Ambassador, to the melting pack ice of the high Arctic.
Jay Gao is a poet and author of Imperium (Carcanet, 2022) plus three poetry pamphlets. He is a Contributing Editor at The White Review. He is a winner of the 2022 Desperate Literature Prize for Short Fiction, the 2021 London Magazine Poetry Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2022 Edwin Morgan Poetry Award. Originally from Edinburgh, Scotland, he earned his MFA at Brown University and is a PhD student at Columbia University in New York City.
Gurnaik Johal is a writer from West London. We Move, his debut collection, won the Tata First Book Award and includes ‘Arrival’, winner of the Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize.
Moses McKenzie is of Caribbean descent and grew up in Bristol, where his first two novels are set. His debut, An Olive Grove in Ends, written when he was twenty-one, was listed as a Guardian Novel of the Year 2022 and shortlisted for the Writers’ Guild Best First Novel Award 2023. He was named as one of The Observer’s 10 Must-Read Debut Novelists of 2022 and won Soho House Breakthrough Writer Award in the same year. He is currently working on the TV adaptation of An Olive Grove in Ends, and has recently completed his second novel, Fast by the Horns, which is scheduled for publication in Spring 2024.
Travelling Scholarships
Five writers each awarded £1,600
The Travelling Scholarships are awarded to British writers to enable engagement with writers abroad. Judged by Emily Barr, Gabriel Gbadamosi, Anne McElvoy, Alvin Pang and Philip Terry.
Total prize fund: £8,000
The winners are Sulaiman Addonia, Tim Atkins, Anjali Joseph, Jen Stout and Piers Torday
Travelling Scholarships judge Philip Terry said:
All writers need to travel, and the Travelling Scholarship Award helps them do just that. It’s a particularly exciting prize, as there are no limits on the kind of work it supports. This year’s awards have gone to a dazzling and eclectic mix of writers, from experimental translators, to cutting-edge journalists, genre-bending novelists, and young adult fabulists.
Sulaiman Addonia is a British-Eritrean-Ethiopian writer. His second novel, Silence is My Mother Tongue, was published by Indigo Press (2019) & Graywolf (2020). Addonia currently lives in Brussels, where he has launched a Creative Writing Academy for Refugees & Asylum Seekers and the Asmara-Addis Literary Festival (In Exile.) In 2021, he was awarded Belgium’s Golden Afro Artistic Award for Literature. In 2022, he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society.
Tim Atkins’ books of poetry, photobooks, and creative nonfiction have been published in the USA, Canada, France, and the UK. He has been a member of the summer faculty at The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University, and his latest book Nothing… is out from Crater Press.
Anjali Joseph was born in Bombay and lives in Oxford. She wrote Saraswati Park, Another Country, The Living, and Keeping in Touch, and has won the Betty Trask Prize, Desmond Elliott Prize, and Vodafone Crossword Book Award for Fiction. She is working on a novel called Attunement.
A former theatre and television producer, Piers Torday’s books include The Last Wild (Shortlisted for Waterstones Children’s Book Prize), The Dark Wild (Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize), The Wild Beyond, There May Be a Castle (which was the Times Children’s Book of the Year), The Lost Magician (Teach Primary Book Award) and The Frozen Sea. His latest book is The Wild Before. His work has been translated into 14 languages. He is the Children’s Fiction Writing Coach for the online academy The Novelry and teaches an online course on writing fantasy fiction for Domestika. The son of Paul Torday (Salmon Fishing in the Yemen), he completed his father’s final unfinished novel, The Death of an Owl, and co-founded the Paul Torday Memorial Prize for Debut Novelists over 60, now in its fifth year. Piers is also Chair of the Society of Authors Sustainability Steering Committee, a Trustee of the Ministry of Stories and The Unicorn Theatre, Patron of Shrewsbury Book Fest and an Artistic Associate at Wilton’s Music Hall. Born in Northumberland, he lives in London with his husband and a very naughty dog.
Jen Stout is a correspondent, radio producer and photojournalist from Shetland. She’s been covering the war in Ukraine since the full-scale invasion, prior to which she was in Moscow on the Alfa Fellowship. She’s worked in TV and radio at BBC Scotland and started out on a local paper in Stranraer.
Will you be publishing the winning and shortlisted stories anywhere? I would really like to read A day by Ciaran Folan, thanks