McKitterick Prize

2025 McKitterick Prize winner Tom Newlands (right) with Joseph Coelho (left) - Photography © Adrian Pope
For a first novel by an author over 40

Tom McKitterick, the former editor of Political Quarterly and author of an unpublished novel, endowed the McKitterick Prize which was first awarded in 1990. It is also generously supported by Hawthornden Literary Retreat. It is given annually to an author over the age of 40 for a first novel, published or unpublished.

The prize money is £4,000 for the winner and £2,000 for the runner-up, with each shortlisted author receiving £1,000 (up to four authors). 

The McKitterick Prize is currently open for submissions.
Deadline for entries: Friday 31 October 2025.


For a first novel by an author over 40. The prize money is £4,000 for the winner and £2,000 for the runner-up, with each shortlisted author receiving £1,000 (up to four authors).

Deadline: Friday 31 October 2025

Entry criteria

  • The author must be living and over the age of 40 on the 31 October 2025.
  • The author must not have had any other novel published (excluding works for children).
  • The novel must be a full length work in the English language by one author (not a translation, and not a work for children).
  • The work must be a work of 'fiction or imagination or substantially of fiction or imagination'.
  • The work must either have been first published in the UK between 1 November 2024 and 31 October 2025 (and not first published abroad), or be unpublished.
  • The author must not have had any novel published other than the one submitted, including self-published works.
  • All submissions must have been written by the author and cannot contain the use of AI generated works.
  • For publishers: maximum two entries per imprint.

Conditions of entry

Present employees (or anyone currently connected with the administration of the Society of Authors’ grants and prizes) or members of the SoA Management Committee may not apply for any of the grants and prizes administered by the Society of Authors.

Judges may call in books if they so wish. The decision of the judges (both as to eligibility and the winning entry) shall be final and they reserve the right not to award the McKitterick Prize if, in their opinion, no works entered reach a sufficiently high standard. The publishers of winning books will assist The Society of Authors in the publicity and promotion of the McKitterick Prize.

We request that “Winner of the McKitterick Prize" or "Shortlisted for the McKitterick Prize" be printed on the cover of subsequent editions of winning/ shortlisted books.

How to enter

For published and self-published entries: Once the following form is completed please send five copies (non-returnable) of the published book or publisher's proof (bound or unbound) to:

The McKitterick Prize,
Prizes department,
The Society of Authors,
24 Bedford Row,
London,
WC1R 4EH.

Please note that couriers should use the entrance on Theobalds Road.

Please also upload a digital version of the book when prompted below. If the file you are using is too large for the form, please complete the rest of the entry form and then send the file via email or WeTransfer to prizes@societyofauthors.org.

For unpublished entries: Upload to this form one copy of the manuscript formatted in line with the following style guide. Only one manuscript may be submitted per applicant.

  • A4 paper size
  • 12 point font size
  • Title of manuscript should appear on the first page, along with the author’s name.
  • Please use page numbers
  •  Maximum of 30 pages (including any title or contents pages used). Longlisted authors will be asked to provide the full manuscript for the judges consideration.
  • Submitted in .doc/.docx/.pdf format
  • File name should include the book title

The prize will be awarded at the annual Society of Authors' Awards ceremony in 2026.
For any queries, please email prizes@societyofauthors.org.

Must be a debut fiction novel and written in English (translated works, children’s novels and other genres such as poetry, non-fiction, or short story collections not included)
For published/self-published authors: the book must have published between 1 November 2023 and 31 October 2024
Entrants must be over the age of 40 on 31 October 2025
Please write a short bio. This may typically include recent publications, the name, date, and details of previous prizes won, education, training, and career background, and pronouns.
For unpublished works only

Entry Submission:

For published work: please upload a digital PDF version of the book.

For unpublished work: please upload one copy of your manuscript formatted in line with the following style guide:

  • A4 paper size
  • Typed in standard font (e.g. Times New Roman/Arial/Calibri/Helvetica)
  • Title of manuscript should appear on the first page only, along with the author’s name
  • Page numbers must be used
  • Maximum of 30 pages (including any title or contents pages used). You may be asked to provide your full manuscript for the judges consideration
  • Submitted in .doc/.docx/.pdf format
  • File name should include book title
Click or drag a file to this area to upload.
Please upload a digital PDF version of the book. If the file is too large for the form please email it to prizes@societyofauthors.org quoting the prize name and book title in the subject line.
I agree to abide by the conditions of entry. I confirm that the author and novel meet the criteria for entry as detailed above.
By ticking the below you are confirming that you have permission to share all the above information with the Society of Authors. We may invite you to take part in PR activities surrounding the prize but you are under no obligation to do so and we will always contact you to ask your permission before giving your contact details to our media partners. To read our full privacy policy please visit our website: societyofauthors.org/Legal-Privacy/Privacy-Statement

The 2025 McKitterick Prize winner


Tom Newlands for Only Here, Only Now (Phoenix, Orion)

Photography © Natalie Thorpe


The 2025 McKitterick Prize runner-up


Lauren Elkin for Scaffolding (Chatto & Windus, Vintage)

Photography © Natalie Thorpe


The 2025 McKitterick Prize shortlist


Susie Dent for Guilty by Definition (Zaffre, Bonnier Books UK)

Ewan Gass for Clinical Intimacy (Doubleday, Penguin Random House)

Lara Haworth for Monumenta (Canongate Books)

Alan Murrin for The Coast Road (Bloomsbury Circus)

Each of these six novels has a fully realized style. So confident and inviting are they that it’s hard to believe they are debuts. With nuanced characters and authentic settings and dilemmas, they engage the mind and delight the emotions. I will be following these authors’ careers with keen interest.’

—  Rebecca Foster, 2025 McKitterick Prize judge

If you are interested in buying any of the books shortlisted here, please visit Bookshop.org. A percentage of each sale will go to the Society of Authors Access Fund, providing access grants to help authors attend events, residencies and retreats.


With thanks, the judges of the 2025 McKitterick Prize:

Rebecca Foster

© Chris Foster

Rebecca Foster is a freelance proofreader and literary critic. From Maryland, USA, she has now lived in England for over 15 years. Her first degree was in English and Religion; she also has an MA in Victorian Literature from the University of Leeds. An associate editor for Bookmarks magazine, she reviews books for multiple print and online publications on both sides of the pond, including BookBrowse, Foreword Reviews, Shelf Awareness, the Times Literary Supplement and Wasafiri, as well as on her blog, Bookish Beck. She volunteers in her local library and is an avid follower of literary prizes.

Gonzalo C. Garcia

Gonzalo C. Garcia is a Chilean writer and Assistant Professor in Creative Writing at the Warwick Writing Programme. His first novel, We Are The End, launched in October 2017 with Galley Beggar Press and was nominated for the Edinburgh Festival First Novel Award 2017. He was also shortlisted for the 2021 Bristol Short Story Prize. He is currently working on his second book and teaching creative writing.

Anietie Isong

Anietie Isong’s novel, Radio Sunrise, won the 2018 McKitterick Prize. His collection of short stories, Someone Like Me, won the first Headlight Review Chapbook Prize for Prose Fiction in 2020. He received the Authors’ Foundation grant for his new novel, News at Noon, which was published in 2022 by Jacaranda Books. Isong has been featured at the Birmingham Literature Festival, Marlborough Literature Festival, Henley Literary Festival, among other literary festivals. He holds a PhD in New Media and Writing.

Wenyan Lu

© Vicky Ma

Wenyan Lu is the winner of Society of Authors’ McKitterick Prize in 2024 for her debut novel The Funeral Cryer. She is represented by Kemi Ogunsanwo at Seventh Agency. Wenyan holds a Master of Studies in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge. She is also a literary translator, and she teaches Creative Writing. The Funeral Cryer won the SI Leeds Literary Award before publication in the UK (Allen & Unwin), North America (Harper Collins), Italy (Garzanti) and Russia (MTS Library). The Funeral Cryer was also Books Are My Bag’s Fiction of the Month and one of Kobo’s Best Fiction of the Month for May 2023. Wenyan lives with her husband and their two children in Cambridge.

Kathy O’Shaughnessy

Kathy O’Shaughnessy has worked as Deputy Editor of the Literary Review, Arts and Books Editor of Vogue, Literary Editor of the European, and Deputy Editor of the Telegraph Arts and Books. She has done Book Choice for Channel 4, and has reviewed books for the Guardian, the TLS, the Telegraph, the Times, the Financial Times, the Independent, the Observer, New Statesman, Spectator, Evening Standard and other publications, as well as the World Service. Kathy also edited and introduced Incompatible Animals, poems in English written by the Croatian poet Drago Stambuk, and her short stories have been published by Faber in First Fictions.

Nick Rennison

© David Lawrence

Nick Rennison is a writer, editor and bookseller with a particular interest in modern history and crime fiction. He is the editor of six anthologies of short stories and has written books on a wide variety of subjects from Freud and psychoanalysis to the history of Bohemian London. His two novels, Carver’s Quest and Carver’s Truth, are both set in nineteenth-century London. He is a regular reviewer for the Sunday Times, for which he has written a monthly column on historical fiction for more than a decade. He has in the past been a judge for the Historical Writers’ Association Gold Crown for historical fiction and for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award.

2024

  • Wenyan Lu for The Funeral Cryer (Allen & Unwin, Atlantic Books)
  • Runner-up: Chidi Ebere for Now I Am Here (Pan Macmillan, Picador)

2023

  • Louise Kennedy for Trespasses (Bloomsbury Publishing)
  • Runner up: Liz Hyder for The Gifts (Manilla Press, Bonnier Books UK)

2022

  • David Annand for Peterdown (Little, Brown Book Group)
  • Runner up: Lisa Taddeo for Animal (Bloomsbury)

2021

  • Elaine Feeney for As You Were (Harvill Secker, Vintage) £4,000
  • Runner-up: Deepa Anappara for Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line (Chatto & Windus, Vintage) £1,250

2020

  • Claire Adam for Golden Child (Faber and Faber) £4,000
  • Runner-up: Taffy Brodesser-Akner for Fleishman is in Trouble  (Wildfire, Headline) £1,250

2019

  • Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott for Swan Song (Hutchinson) £4,000
  • Runner-up: Carys Davies for West (Granta Books) £1,250

2018

  • Anietie Isongfor Radio Sunrise (Jacaranda) £4,000
  • Runner-up: Frances Maynard for The Seven Rules of Elvira Carr (Mantle) £1,250

2017

  • David Dyer for The Midnight Watch (Atlantic Books) £4,000
  • Runner-up: Austin Duffy for This Living & immortal Thing (Granta) £1,000

2016

  • Petina Gappah for The Book of Memory (Faber) £4,000
  • Runner-up: Nick Coleman for Pillow Man (Cape) £1,000

2015

  • Robert Allison for The Letter Bearer (Granta) £4,000
  • Runner-up: Paul Ewen for Francis Pug: How To Be A Public Author (Galley Beggar Press) £1,000

2014

  • Gabriel Weston for Dirty Work (Cape) £4,000                                             
  • Runner-up: Gabriel Gbadamosi for Vauxhall (Telegram Books) £1,000

2013

  • Alison Moore for The Lighthouse (Salt) £4,000                                           
  • Runner-up: Caroline Brothers for Hinterland (Bloomsbury)

2012

  • Ginny Baily for Africa Junction (Harvill Secker / Vintage) £4,000
  • Runner-up: Cressida Connolly for My Former Heart (Fourth Estate)

2011

  • Emma Henderson for Grace Williams Says It Loud (Sceptre) £4,000
  • Runner-up: Frances Kay for Micka (Picador)

2010

  • Raphael Selbourne for Beauty (Tindal Street Press) £4,000

2009

  • Chris Hannan for Missy (Chatto) £4,000

2008

  • Jennie Walker for 24 for 3 (Bloomsbury) £4,000

2007

  • Reina James for This Time of Dying (Portobello) £4,000

2006

  • Peter Pouncey for Rules for Old Men Waiting (Chatto & Windus) £4,000

2005

  • Lloyd Jones for Mr Vogel (Seren) £4,000

2004

  • Mark Haddonfor The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (Jonathan Cape) £4,000

2003

  • Mary Lawson Crow for Lake (Chatto & Windus) £4,000

2002

  • Manil Suri for The Death of Vishnu (Bloomsbury Publishing) £4,000

2001

  • Giles Waterfieldfor The Long Afternoon (Headline Review) £4,000

2000

  • Chris Dolan for Ascension Day (Headline Review) £4,000

1999

  • Magnus Mills for The Restraint of Beasts (Flamingo) £4,000

1998

  • Eli Gottlieb for The Boy Who Went Away (Jonathan Cape) £4,000

1997

  • Patricia Duncker for Hallucinating Foucault (Serpent’s Tail) £4,000

1996

  • Stephen Blanchard for Gagarin and I (Vintage) £5,000

1995

  • Christopher for Bigsby Hester (Weidenfeld) £5,000

1994

  • Helen Dunmore for Zennor in Darkness (Viking) £5,000

1993

  • Andrew Barrow for The Tap Dancer (Duckworth) £5,000

1992

  • Alberto Manguel for News from a Foreign Country Came (Harper Collins) £5,000

1991

  • John Loveday for Halo (Harcourt Brace) £5,000

1990

  • Simon Mawer for Chimera (Hamish Hamilton) £5,000

Tom McKitterick

Thomas Edward Maurice McKitterick, also known as T.E.M McKitterick lived in Dartford, Kent and died on the 11 November 1986. He worked as a wartime censor with the French army in the middle East, which later inspired the unpublished novel he wrote at age 65. The novel was also set during war and took place across Lebanon, Algiers and Bordeaux. McKitterick was the joint editor of the magazine Political Quarterly from 1957–1966 and a regular contributor to radio programmes on topics of world service. Along, with Leonard Woolf (under the pen name Kenneth Younger) he was a contributing editor for Fabian International Essays, which was published by Hogarth Press in 1957.

Having written an unpublished novel himself later on in life, Tom McKitterick was keen to celebrate and uphold unpublished and first time authors. He became a member of the Society of Authors on 9 January 1981 and after his death, he left a trust to set up the McKitterick Prize, which was awarded for the first time in 1990.

Hawthornden Foundation

Hawthornden Foundation is a private charitable foundation supporting contemporary writers and the literary arts. Established by Drue Heinz, the noted philanthropist and patron of the arts, the Foundation is named after Hawthornden Castle in Midlothian, Scotland, where an international residential fellowship program provides month-long retreats for creative writers from all disciplines to work in peaceful surroundings. In addition, the Foundation sponsors the annual Hawthornden Prize, one of Britain’s oldest and foremost literary awards, and provides grant support to other literary programs.


Charity number 327891