Annual literary award
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 other writers, called the "Awards". 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. They're given to traditional or romantic novels, rather than those of an experimental style, and either published or unpublished works.
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 ( ) 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
Rachel Seiffert
The Dark Room
£5,000
Shamim Sarif
The World Unseen
£4,000
Helen Cross
My Summer of Love
£2,000
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
References
"Betty Trask" . Society of Authors.
Betty Trask Prize and Awards Archived 9 May 2009 at the Wayback Machine
"The Betty Trask Prize and Awards" . Christchurch City Libraries. Retrieved 4 November 2007.
Yates, Emma (19 June 2002). "Hari Kunzru wins Betty Trask Prize" . The Guardian . ISSN 0261-3077 . Retrieved 3 February 2023.
"Indian writer wins Betty Trask award for debut novel" . DNA India . 23 June 2011. Retrieved 4 February 2023.
"Authors’ Awards 2014" Archived 27 October 2014 at the Wayback Machine , The Society Of Authors , 27 June 2014.
"Authors’ Awards 2015" Archived 29 June 2015 at the Wayback Machine , The Society Of Authors , 25 June 2015.
^ "Previous winners of the Betty Trask Prize and Awards" . Society of Authors . Retrieved 6 July 2017.
"Hind wins £10,000 Betty Trask Prize for 'Hitch'" . Books+Publishing . 19 June 2020. Retrieved 19 June 2020.
"News | The Society of Authors" . societyofauthors.org . Retrieved 6 June 2022.
rachel (24 May 2023). "Mercia's Take has won The Betty Trask Prize" . Swift Press . Retrieved 15 April 2024.
"The 2024 Betty Trask Prize winner" . The Society of Authors . Retrieved 15 November 2024.
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