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 2021 Prize is now closed.

CRITERIA FOR ENTRY 

• UK and Irish citizens and those who have been resident in the UK and/or the Republic of Ireland for the three years preceding the award are all eligible. 
• The author must be between the ages of 18 and 35 years on 31 December 2021. 
• The work submitted must be by one author in the English language. 
• The work submitted must have been first published in the UK and/or the Republic of Ireland, in the English language, between 23 June 2020 and 31 August 2021.  
• Ebooks must be submitted in PDF format. 
• Publishers may enter up to three entries per imprint and may provide a written submission for one further title for possible call in. 

The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award 2020 winner was Jay Bernard for Surge (Chatto & Windus)

The judges chose Bernard from a shortlist of 5 that also contained Catherine Cho (for the memoir Inferno), poet Seán Hewitt (for Tongues of Fire), alongside the novelists Naoise Dolan (for Exciting Times) and Marina Kemp (for Nightingale).