Young Writer of the Year Award

The Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year Award is awarded for a full-length published or self-published (in book or ebook formats) work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry, by an author aged 18 – 35 years. The winner receives £10,000. There are three prizes of £1000 each for runners-up. The winning book will be a work of outstanding literary merit. The award is an annual prize, sponsored by the Sunday Times and the Charlotte Aitken Trust. The prize is administered by the Society of Authors.

The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award is awarded for the previous year, for example in 2023 the 2022 Award will be voted for, and announced.

WINNER 2024

The New Life

Crewe, Tom ISBN: 9781529919714
Paperback / softback

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London, 1894. John and Henry have a vision for a new way of life. But as the Oscar Wilde trial ignites public outcry, everything they long for could be under threat.

After a lifetime spent navigating his desires, John has finally found a man who returns his feelings. Meanwhile, Henry is convinced that his new unconventional marriage will bring freedom. United by a shared vision, they begin work on a revolutionary book arguing for the legalisation of homosexuality. Before it can be published however, Oscar Wilde is arrested and their daring book threatens to throw them, and all around them, into danger. How high a price are they willing to pay for a new way of living?

- Browns Books Synopsis

SHORTLIST 2024

Crewe, Tom ISBN: 9781529919714
Paperback / softback

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Magee, Michael ISBN: 9780241582978
Hardback

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Masud, Noreen ISBN: 9780241544051
Hardback

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Mehri, Momtaza ISBN: 9781787334373
Hardback

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“For young writers, a prize makes all the difference: not just the publicity flare, or the tag-line on the paperback jacket, but the jag of confidence it brings. Someone believes in your prose, someone has prized those sentences you spent all those years laying end to end… Nothing crushes the wish to write quite like apathy; nothing boosts it quite like being read and responded to carefully. [After winning the award in 2004] I started to think I might be able to write another book – that became The Wild Places (2007), and here I am in 2015, six books down and another underway, thinking back more than a decade to the Prize, and the huge boost it gave me.”

- Robert Macfarlane, Winner 2004