20 June 2017 Novelist and poet Ben Okri presented the prizes to writers of fiction, non-fiction and poetry, at a ceremony held at the Army & Navy Club, Pall Mall. £35,000 was awarded in prizes for poetry (the Eric Gregory Awards and the Cholmondeley Awards) £31,500 was awarded in prizes for fiction (the Betty Trask…
The Society of Authors and the Publishers Association join forces with English PEN to campaign for imprisoned writers across the globe. English PEN, the Society of Authors and the Publishers Association are pleased to announce the launch of their joint campaign ‘Speak Out’. English PEN has long campaigned for the rights of writers and other…
9 June 2017 What we know, what we don’t – our initial response to the election result. If the aim of calling a June election was to stabilise government, shore up support and clarify direction, it is obvious today that it has had the opposite effect. No single party has the seats to form a…
7 June 2017 The Power by Naomi Alderman has been named as the winner of the £30,000 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction at an awards ceremony at Royal Festival Hall this evening. The Power, a feminist science fiction novel, follows four characters navigating a changed world in which all women have developed the power to…
7 June 2017 We were deeply saddened to hear of the death, earlier this week, of writer, poet and children’s author Helen Dunmore. Helen joined the Society in 1993. She won a McKitterick prize in 2004 for Zennor in Darkness. Helen always showed a great interest in and support for our causes. She went on…
6 June 2017 With the election just days away we measured the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat manifesto pledges against our campaign asks. At the beginning of May, we published More than Just Words, a set of pre-election asks calling on the next Government to “support Britain’s cultural heart: with funding and legislation, with transparency…
EU member states can now reduce the rate to zero, in line with print. After years of lobbying by authors and publishers, the European Parliament voted today to allow individual EU countries the right to reduce the VAT rate on ebooks. Ebooks currently attract a 20% VAT charge because they are classified as an ‘electronic…
16 May 2016 The Society of Authors has announced the 2017 shortlist for the Betty Trask Prize and Awards. This year’s shortlist of six debut literary novels by authors under the age of 35 includes a self-published novel for the first time. The winner, to be announced at the SoA Authors’ Awards on 20 June,…
The award-winning novelist and political commentator Elif Shafak and the acclaimed cultural historian and biographer Lucy Hughes-Hallett will join Andrew Holgate on the judging panel of The Sunday Times / Peter Frasers + Dunlop Young Writer of the Year Award. Now run in association with the University of Warwick, the prize rewards the best work…
Amazon has said that the main ‘buy’ button on any book listing could, in future, be ‘won’ by a second-hand seller so that it links to their copy rather than one sold by the publisher. Authors do not receive royalties on books bought in this way. When challenged in the US, Amazon said ‘our bookstore…
The Society of Authors joins Index on Censorship, the Peter Tatchell Foundation, the Publishers Association and Reporters Sans Frontières in sponsoring the next English PEN-organised vigil, calling on the Saudi Arabian government for the immediate release of writer, blogger and activist Raif Badawi, and to mark the fifth anniversary of his arrest. Badawi was arrested…
2 May 2017 We call on the next Government to support Britain’s cultural heart: with funding and legislation, with transparency and ambition – always with more than just words. Photograph: Ben Terrett / Flickr As Britain gears up to go to the polls on 8th June, we have published More than Just Words, a set…
