The Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year Award is a literary prize awarded to a British author under the age of 35 for a published work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry. It is administered by the Society of Authors[1] and has been running since 1991.[2]
The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award is said here to have originally run between 1991 and 2009, but there is evidence to confirm that it began twenty years earlier. At that time entries were confined to short stories and published in the newspaper itself. The 1974 winner was Charles Nicholl, who went on to become well-known for historical biographies.[3] "The Ups and The Downs" was Charles Nicholl's disturbing and humorous account of a bad LSD trip in London.
In 1999, Paul Farley's The Boy from the Chemist is Here to See You "was so well received", according to the Encyclopedia of British Writers, that "it was named Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award".[4]
It was re-invigorated with the support of literary agents Peters Fraser + Dunlop in 2015 under the new name Sunday Times / Peters Fraser + Dunlop Young Writer of the Year Award.[5]
In 2019 the University of Warwick took over as co-sponsor. The award was renamed as The Sunday Times / University of Warwick Young Writer of the Year Award.
| Year | Author | Title | Publisher | Award | Judges |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1991 | Helen Simpson | Four Bare Legs in a Bed and Other Stories | William Heinemann | Winner | |
| 1992 | Caryl Phillips | Cambridge | Bloomsbury | Winner | |
| 1993 | Simon Armitage | Xanadu: A Poem Film for Television and Kid | Bloodaxe/Faber & Faber | Winner | |
| 1994 | William Dalrymple | City of Djinns: A Year in Dehli | HarperCollins | Winner | |
| 1995 | Andrew Cowan | Pig | Michael Joseph | Winner | |
| 1996 | Katherine Pierpoint | Truffle Beds | Faber & Faber | Winner | |
| 1997 | Francis Spufford | I May Be Some Time: Ice and the English Imagination | Faber & Faber | Winner | |
| 1998 | Patrick French | Liberty or Death: India's Journey to Independence and Division | HarperCollins | Winner | |
| 1999 | Paul Farley | The Boy from the Chemist is Here to See You | Pan Macmillan | Winner | |
| 2000 | Sarah Waters | Affinity | Virago | Winner | |
| 2001 | Zadie Smith | White Teeth | Hamish Hamilton | Winner | |
| 2002 | No award made | ||||
| 2003 | William Fiennes | Picador Classic | Winner | ||
| 2004 | Robert Macfarlane | Mountains of the Mind | Granta Books | Winner | |
| 2005 | No award made | ||||
| 2006 | No award made | ||||
| 2007 | Naomi Alderman | Disobedience | Penguin | Winner | |
| Horatio Clare | Running for the Hills | John Murray | Shortlist | ||
| Rory Stewart | Occupational Hazards: My Time Governing in Iraq | Picador | |||
| John Stubbs | John Donne: The Reformed Soul | W. W. Norton & Company | |||
| 2008 | Adam Foulds | [6] | Weidenfeld & Nicolson | Winner | |
| Nikita Lalwani | Gifted | Viking | Shortlist | ||
| James McConnachie | The Book of Love: In Search of the Kamasutra Kama Sutra | Atlantic | |||
| Robert Mcfarlane | The Wild Places | Granta | |||
| 2009 | Ross Raisin | God's Own Country[7] | Viking | Winner | |
| Adam Foulds | The Broken Word | Cape | Shortlist | ||
| Henry Hitchings | The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English | John Murray | |||
| Edward Hogan | Blackmoor | ||||
| 2010 | No award made | ||||
| 2011 | No award made | ||||
| 2012 | No award made | ||||
| 2013 | No award made | ||||
| 2014 | No award made | ||||
| 2015 | Sarah Howe | Loop of Jade[8] | Chatto & Windus | Winner | Sarah Waters, Andrew Holgate, Peter Kemp |
| Ben Fergusson | The Spring of Kasper Meier | Little, Brown | Shortlist | ||
| Sunjeev Sahota | The Year of the Runaways | Picador | |||
| Sara Taylor | The Shore | William Heineman | |||
| 2016 | Max Porter | Grief Is the Thing with Feathers | Faber & Faber | Winner | James Naughtie, Stella Tillyard, Andrew Holgate |
| Jessie Greengrass | An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk According to One Who Saw It | John Murray Press | Shortlist | ||
| Andrew McMillan | Physical | Jonathan Cape | |||
| Benjamin Wood | The Ecliptic | Simon & Schuster | |||
| 2017 | Sally Rooney | Conversations with Friends | Faber & Faber | Winner | Elif Shafak, Lucy Hughes-Hallett, Andrew Holgate |
| Minoo Dinshaw | Outlandish Knight: The Byzantine Life of Steven Runciman | Penguin | Shortlist | ||
| Claire North | The End of the Day | Orbit | |||
| Julianne Pachico | The Lucky Ones | Faber & Faber | |||
| Sara Taylor | The Lauras | Windmill | |||
| 2018 | Adam Weymouth | Kings of the Yukon: An Alaskan River Journey | Penguin | Winner | Kamila Shamsie, Susan Hill, Andrew Holgate |
| Laura Freeman | The Reading Cure: How Books Restored My Appetite | Weidenfeld & Nicolson | Shortlist | ||
| Imogen Hermes Gowar | The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock | Harvill Secker | |||
| Fiona Mozley | Elmet | Hodder & Stoughton | |||
| 2019 | Raymond Antrobus | [9] | Penned in the Margins | Winner | Kate Clanchy, Victoria Hislop, Andrew Holgate |
| Julia Armfield | Salt Slow | Pan Macmillan | Shortlist | ||
| Emma Glass | Peach | Bloomsbury Publishing | |||
| Kim Sherwood | Testament | riverrun | |||
| 2020 | Jay Bernard | Surge | Chatto & Windus | Winner | Sebastian Faulks, Tessa Hadley, Andrew Holgate |
| Caoilinn Hughes | The Wild Laughter | Oneworld Publications | Shortlist | ||
| Naoise Dolan | Exciting Times | Orion | |||
| Okechukwu Nzelu | The Private Joys of Nnenna Maloney | Dialogue Books | |||
| Miriam Nash | All the Prayers in the House | Bloodaxe Books | |||
| 2021 | Caleb Azumah Nelson | Open Water | Viking | Winner | Tahmima Anam, Susan Hill, Andrew Holgate |
| Anna Beecher | Here Comes the Miracle | Weidenfeld & Nicolson | Shortlist | ||
| A. K. Blakemore | The Manningtree Witches | Granta | |||
| Rachel Long | My Darling from the Lions | Picador | |||
| Eley Williams | The Liar's Dictionary | William Heinemann | |||