The Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year Award is an annual award, made possible by the Charlotte Aitken Trust and the Sunday Times. The prize of £10,000 is awarded for a full-length published or self-published (in book or ebook formats) work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry, by a British or Irish author aged 18-35 years. There are prizes of £1,000 for each shortlistee. The winning book will be the work of the most outstanding literary merit. 

The 2022 Prize is now closed.

The 2022 Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year Award Winner

A ‘PROPULSIVE’ NOVEL THAT POWERFULLY EXAMINES REGION, CLASS AND RACE

Novelist and screenwriter Tom Benn, has been named winner of the 2022 Sunday Times Charlotte
Aitken Young Writer of the Year Award for Oxblood, a novel that judge Oyinkan Braithwaite called a
‘bountiful, fearless work of literary art’, daringly exploring masculine violence and fractured
female agency through the domestic lives of three generations of working-class women in 1980s
Manchester.

Oxblood is a landmark novel shifting the perspective on male violence towards the female experience of
grief, love and resilience. Set in a council house haunted by memories of dead family members, Benn’s unflinching storytelling unearths the forgotten working class voices left in the footnotes of Manchester’s industrial history, shrouded by criminal secrecy and steeped in a powerful emotional darkness which left this year’s judges’ ‘bowled over’ and certain that Tom Benn’s talent will only continue to ‘grow and grow’.

2022 Shortlist

SHORTLIST CELEBRATES FOUR WRITERS “WHO HAVE SET THEMSELVES FREE OF PUBLISHING CONVENTIONS”

The most influential prize for young writers, The Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year Award, announces its shortlist of authors, described as ‘immensely powerful’ by Chair of Judges Andrew Holgate, whilst the new Literary Editor of The Sunday Times, Johanna Thomas-Corr, praises the authors ‘who refuse to be bent into shape’. The judges have chosen:

• Lucy Burns, a debut writer from Manchester, for her intimate memoir, Larger than an Orange, which examined the dichotomy between abortion as a political statement and an individual experience, and was selected as one of The Sunday Times Books of the Year 2021

• London-born debut novelist Maddie Mortimer for Maps of our Spectacular Bodies, a lyrical and captivating look at mortality, desire and forgiveness, which won the Desmond Elliott Prize 2022

• Oxford Fellow, Katherine Rundell, for the only non-fiction title on the shortlist and winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 2021, Super-Infinite, an illuminating and complex portrait of England’s greatest love poet, John Donne

2022 Judges

This year’s judges are spearheaded by the former Literary Editor of The Sunday Times Andrew Holgate, who remains as Chair of Judges, and the new Sunday Times Literary Editor, Johanna Thomas-Corr who are joined by critic and journalist Stig Abell, poet Mona Arshi, author Oyinkan Braithwaite, and novelist and earlier winner of the prize, Francis Spufford.

• Stig Abell said: “It is impossible to talk about writing by comparatively young people without sounding old and fusty and a bit envious. But the books we’ve picked are genuinely exciting and fresh; they are thought-provoking without being arch, and innovative without being annoying about it. The central thinking behind their selection is simple and what it should always be: they are great stories told in a way that lingers in the mind after you close the book.”
  

• Oyinkan Braithwaite said: “The shortlist comprises a formidable selection of works that are ambitious, unorthodox, unflinching. They may vary wildly in subject matter and style, but each of them is an example of the expert finessing of language and form. The authors have certainly earned their place here.”
  

• Francis Spufford said: “I’m delighted by the haul of treasures our shortlist represents. We’ve got non- fiction whose every sentence glitters with intelligence; life-writing that makes radical and heartfelt use of form; a crime novel that claims the richest and darkest of emotional territory; and a piece of literary innovation which plays its way to the limits of life and death. And just behind them, there was a mass of other lovely stuff we were sorry to have to leave out. On this showing, the future of writing is very strong – and incredibly various.”

If you are interested in reading any of these titles, you can find the books online here
A percentage of each sale purchased through this link will be donated to the SoA Contingency Fund, which provides small grants to writers in immediate financial need.