Betty Trask Prize and Awards

The Betty Trask Prize and Awards are for first novels written by authors under the age of 35 who reside in a current or former Commonwealth nation. Each year the awards total at least £20,000, with normally one author receiving a larger prize amount (£10,000 in very recent years), called the "Prize", and the remainder given to the other nominees, called the "Awards".[1] These were established in 1984 by the Society of Authors at the bequest of the late Betty Trask, a reclusive author of over thirty romance novels.[2] They're given to traditional or romantic novels, rather than those of an experimental style, and either published or unpublished works.[3]

List of award and prize winners

1980s

Betty Trask Prize and Award winners, 1984–1989
Year Author Title Prize
1984 Ronald Frame Winter Journey £6,750
Clare Nonhebel Cold Showers £6,750
James Buchan A Parish of Rich Women £1,000
Helen Harris Playing Fields in Winter £1,000
Gareth Jones The Disinherited £1,000
Simon Rees The Devil's Looking Glass £1,000
1985 Susan Kay Legacy £12,500
Gary Armitage A Season of Peace £1,000
Elizabeth Ironside A Very Private Enterprise £1,000
Alice Mitchell Instead of Eden £1,000
George Schweiz The Earth Abides For Ever £1,000
Caroline Stickland The Standing Hills £1,000
1986 Tim Parks Tongues of Flame £9,000
Patricia Ferguson Family, Myths and Legends £4,500
Philippa Blake Mzungu's Wife £1,000
Matthew Kneale Whore Banquets £1,000
J. F. McLaughlin The Road to Dilmun £1,000
Kate Saunders The Prodigal Father £1,000
1987 James Maw Hard Luck £8,000
Peter Benson The Levels £4,500
Helen Flint Return Journey £4,500
Catherine Arnold Lost Time £1,000
H. S. Bhabra Gestures £1,000
Lucy Pinney The Pink Stallion £1,000
1988 Alex Martin The General Interruptor MS £6,500
Candia McWilliam A Case of Knives £6,500
Georgina Andrewes Behind the Waterfall £2,000
James Friel Left of North £2,000
Glenn Patterson Burning Your Own £2,000
Susan Webster Small Tales of a Town £2,000
1989 Nigel Watts The Life Game £10,000
William Riviere Watercolour Sky £5,000
Paul Houghton Harry's Last Wedding £2,000
Alasdair McKee Uncle Henry's Last Stand £2,000

1990s

Betty Trask Award winners, 1990–1999
Year Author Title Prize
1990 Robert McLiam Wilson Ripley Bogle £16,000
Elizabeth Chadwick The Wild Hunt £3,000
Rosemary Cohen No Strange Land £3,000
Nicholas Shakespeare The Vision of Elena Silves £3,000
1991 Amit Chaudhuri A Strange and Sublime Address £10,000
Mark Swallow Teaching Little Fang £7,000
Suzannah Dunn Quite Contrary £2,000
Lesley Glaister Honour Thy Father £2,000
Simon Mason The Great English Nude £2,000
Nino Ricci Lives of the Saints £2,000
1992 Peter M. Rosenburg Kissing Through a Pane of Glass £5,000
Tibor Fischer Under the Frog £3,000
Liane Jones The Dream Stone £3,000
Eugene Mullan The Last of His Line £3,000
Edward St Aubyn Never Mind £3,000
1993 Mark Blackaby You'll Never be Here Again £10,000
Andrew Cowan Pig £7,000
Simon Corrigan Tommy Was Here £5,000
Joanna Briscoe Mothers and Other Lovers £2,000
Olivia Fane Landing on Clouds £2,000
1994 Colin Bateman Divorcing Jack £12,000
Nadeem Aslam Season of the Rainbirds £10,000
Guy Burt After the Hole £1,000
Frances Liardet The Game £1,000
Jonathan Rix Some Hope £1,000
1995 Robert Newman Dependence Day £10,000
Mark Behr The Smell of Apples £8,000
Martina Evans Midnight Feast £3,000
Rohit Manchanda A Speck of Coaldust £1,000
Juliet Thomas Hallelujah Jordan £1,000
Philippa Walshe The Latecomer £1,000
Madeleine Wickham The Tennis Party £1,000
1996 John Lanchester The Debt to Pleasure £8,000
Meera Syal Anita and Me £7,000
Rhidian Brook The Testimony of Taliesin Jones £5,000
Louis Caron Buss The Luxury of Exile £5,000
1997 Alex Garland The Beach £12,000
Josie Barnard Poker Face £5,000
Ardashir Vakil Beach Boy £5,000
Diran Adebayo Some Kind of Black £1,500
Sanjida O'Connell Theory of Mind £1,500
1998 Kiran Desai Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard £10,000
Nick Earls Zig Zag Street £8,000
Phil Whitaker Eclipse of the Sun £5,000
Tobias Hill Underground £1,000
Gail Anderson-Dargatz The Cure for Death by Lightning £1,000
1999 Elliot Perlman Three Dollars £7,000
Catherine Chidgey In a Fishbone Church £6,000
Giles Foden The Last King of Scotland £4,000
Dennis Bock Olympia £3,000
Rajeev Balasubramanyam In Beautiful Disguises £2,500
Sarah Waters Tipping the Velvet £1,000

2000s

Since 2009, the Betty Trask Prize has been given to a single author; the remaining receive the Betty Trask Award. A blue ribbon (Blue ribbon) indicates the winner for that year.

Betty Trask Award winners, 2000–2009
Year Author Title Prize Ref.
2000 Jonathan Tulloch The Season Ticket £10,000
Julia Leigh The Hunter £7,000
Susan Elderkin Sunset Over Chocolate Mountains £4,000
Galaxy Craze By the Shore £2,000
Nicholas Griffin The Requiem Shark £2,000
2001 Zadie Smith White Teeth £8,000
Justin Hill The Drink and Dream Teahouse £5,000
Maggie O'Farrell After You'd Gone £5,000
Vivien Kelly Take One Young Man £4,000
Mohsin Hamid Moth Smoke £2,500
Patrick Neate Musungu Jim and the Great Chief Tuloko £2,500
2002 Hari Kunzru The Impressionist £8,000 [4]
Rachel Seiffert The Dark Room £5,000
Shamim Sarif The World Unseen £4,000
Helen Cross My Summer of Love £2,000 [5]
Chloe Hooper A Child's Book of True Crime £2,000
Susanna Jones The Earthquake Bird £2,000
Gwendoline Riley Cold Water £2,000
2003 Jon McGregor If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things £10,000
Sarah Hall Haweswater £6,000
Stephanie Merritt Gaveston £4,000
Elizabeth Garner Nightdancing £2,000
Zoë Strachan Negative Space £2,000
Adam Thirlwell Politics £1,000
2004 Louise Dean Becoming Strangers £8,000
Hannah MacDonald The Sun Road £6,000
Anthony Cartwright The Afterglow £3,000
Siddharth Dhanvant Sanghvi The Last Song of Dusk £3,000
2005 Susan Fletcher Eve Green £16,000
Diana Evans 26a £2,000
Helen Walsh Brass £2,000
2006 Nick Laird Utterly Monkey £10,000
Peter Hobbs The Short Day Dying £5,000
Nicola Monaghan The Killing Jar £5,000
2007 Will Davis My Side of the Story £10,000
Adam Foulds The Truth About These Strange Times £2,500
Cynan Jones The Long Dry £2,500
Julie Maxwell You Can Live Forever £2,500
Karen McLeod In Search of the Missing Eyelash £2,500
2008 David Szalay London and the South £10,000
Ross Raisin God's Own Country £6,000
Thomas Leveritt The Exchange Rate Between Love and Money £2,000
Anna Ralph The Floating Island £2,000
2009 Blue ribbon Samantha Harvey The Wilderness £12,000
Eleanor Catton The Rehearsal £8,000

2010s

Betty Trask Award winners, 2010–2019
Year Author Title Prize Ref.
2010 Nadifa Mohamed Black Mamba Boy £10,000
Evie Wyld After the Fire, A Still Small Voice £7,000
Jenn Ashworth A Kind of Intimacy £1,500
Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani I Do Not Come to You By Chance £1,500
2011 Anjali Joseph Saraswati Park £10,000 [6]
Laura Barton Twenty-One Locks £6,000
Simon Lelic Rupture £2,500
Robert Williams Luke and Jon £2,500
2012 David Whitehouse Bed £8,000
Kalinda Ashton The Danger Game £3,000
Elizabeth Day Scissors, Paper, Stone £3,000
Annabel Pitcher My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece £3,000
Emma Jane Unsworth Hungry the Stars and Everything £3,000
2013 Grace McCleen The Land of Decoration £8,000
Chibundu Onuzo The Spider King's Daughter £7,000
Francesca Segal The Innocents £2,500
Will Wiles Care of Wooden Floors £2,500
2014 Nathan Filer The Shock of the Fall £10,000 [7]
NoViolet Bulawayo We Need New Names £3,750
Sam Byers Idiopathy £3,750
Mave Fellowes Chaplin and Company £3,750
Matt Greene Ostrich £3,750
2015 Ben Fergusson The Spring of Kasper Meier £10,000 [8]
Emma Healey Elizabeth Is Missing £5,000
Zoe Pilger Eat My Heart Out £5,000
Simon Wroe Chop Chop £5,000
2016 Alex Christofi Glass £10,000 [9]
Irenosen Okojie Butterfly Fish £5,000
Natasha Pulley The Watchmaker of Filigree Street £5,000
Lucy Wood Wood for Weathering £5,000
2017 Daniel Shand Fallow £10,000 [9]
Rowan Hisayo Buchanan Harmless Like You £3,000
Elnathan John Born on a Tuesday £3,000
Kathleen Jowitt Speak Its Name £3,000
Rob McCarthy The Hollow Men £3,000
Barney Norris Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain £3,000
2018 Omar Robert Hamilton The City Always Wins £10,000
Sarah Day Mussolini's Island £3,250
Clare Fisher All the Good Things £3,250
Eli Goldstone Strange Heart Beating £3,250
Lloyd Markham Bad Ideas/Chemicals £3,250
Masande Ntshanga The Reactive £3,250
2019 James Clarke The Litten Path £10,000
Samuel Fisher The Chameleon £2,700
Imogen Hermes Gowar The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock £2,700
Ruqaya Izzidien The Watermelon Boys £2,700
Daisy Lafarge Paul £2,700
Rebecca Ley Sweet Fruit, Sour Land £2,700
Sophie Mackintosh The Water Cure £2,700

2020s

Betty Trask Award winners, 2020–present
Year Author Title Prize Ref.
2020 Kathryn Hind Hitch £10,000 [10]
Stacey Halls The Familiars £5,400
Isabella Hammad The Parisian £5,400
Okeychukwu Nzelu The Private Joys of Nnenna Maloney £5,400
2021 McMullan The Last Good Man
Graeme Armstrong The Young Team
Maame Blue Bad Love
Kiran Millwood Hargrave The Mercies
Eley Williams The Liar’s Dictionary
Nneoma Ike-Njoku The Water House
2022 Will McPhail IN: The Graphic Novel [11]
A. K. Blakemore The Manningtree Witches
Natasha Brown Assembly
Caleb Azumah Nelson Open Water
Megan Nolan Acts of Desperation
2023 Daniel Wiles Mercia's Take £10,000 [12]
Paddy Crewe My Name Is Yip
Imogen Crimp A Very Nice Girl
Maddie Mortimer Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies
2024 Tom Crewe The New Life £10,000 [13]
Stephen Buoro The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa
Rachel Connoly Lazy City
Rachel Dawson Neon Roses
C. E. McGill Our Hideous Progeny
Nathan Munday Whaling
2025 Bonnie Burke-Patel I Died at Fallow Hall [14]
Madeline Docherty Gender Theory
Genevieve Jagger Fragile Animals
Ashani Lewis Winter Animals
Elizabeth O'Connor Whale Fall
Nicolas Padamsee England Is Mine

References

  1. ^ "Betty Trask". Society of Authors.
  2. ^ Betty Trask Prize and Awards Archived 9 May 2009 at the Wayback Machine
  3. ^ "The Betty Trask Prize and Awards". Christchurch City Libraries. Retrieved 4 November 2007.
  4. ^ Yates, Emma (19 June 2002). "Hari Kunzru wins Betty Trask Prize". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 3 February 2023.
  5. ^ "Betty Trask Prize: Past winners". Society of Authors. Retrieved 29 April 2025.
  6. ^ "Indian writer wins Betty Trask award for debut novel". DNA India. 23 June 2011. Retrieved 4 February 2023.
  7. ^ "Authors’ Awards 2014" Archived 27 October 2014 at the Wayback Machine, The Society Of Authors, 27 June 2014.
  8. ^ "Authors’ Awards 2015" Archived 29 June 2015 at the Wayback Machine, The Society Of Authors, 25 June 2015.
  9. ^ a b "Previous winners of the Betty Trask Prize and Awards". Society of Authors. Retrieved 6 July 2017.
  10. ^ "Hind wins £10,000 Betty Trask Prize for 'Hitch'". Books+Publishing. 19 June 2020. Retrieved 19 June 2020.
  11. ^ "News | The Society of Authors". societyofauthors.org. Retrieved 6 June 2022.
  12. ^ rachel (24 May 2023). "Mercia's Take has won The Betty Trask Prize". Swift Press. Retrieved 15 April 2024.
  13. ^ "The 2024 Betty Trask Prize winner". The Society of Authors. Retrieved 15 November 2024.
  14. ^ McDonald, Teddy (21 May 2025). "'Incantatory, spell-binding and resonant' – announcing the 2025 Society of Authors' Awards shortlists". Society of Authors. Retrieved 14 June 2025.
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