Betty Trask left a bequest to the Society of Authors in 1983 to fund prizes for first novels written by authors under the age of 35 in a traditional or romantic, but not experimental, style.
2021 Betty Trask Prize Winner

Thomas McMullan for The Last Good Man (Bloomsbury)
2021 Betty Trask Award Winners
- Maame Blue for Bad Love (Jacaranda Books)
- Eley Williams for The Liar’s Dictionary (William Heinemann, Cornerstone)
- Kiran Millwood Hargrave for The Mercies (Pan Macmillan, Picador)
- Nneoma Ike-Njoku for The Water House
- Graeme Armstrong for The Young Team (Pan Macmillan, Picador)
Entry to the 2022 award is now closed.
The winners will be announced at a ceremony in June 2022.
- Deadline for entries: 30 November 2021
- Applicants must be under the age of 35 on 31 December 2021
- Applicants must be resident in Great Britain and Northern Ireland of the Commonwealth for three years prior to the date of submission for the award, or a British National
- Applicants must not have had any other novel published
- Submissions must be in English and must not be a translation
- Submissions must be of a romantic or traditional nature (i.e. not experimental)
- Submissions must have been first published in 2021, or be unpublished
- If unpublished, the work must not have been previously submitted for the Betty Trask Prize & Awards.
For any queries relating to the prize please contact prizes@societyofauthors.org
2021
- Prize Winner: Thomas McMullan for The Last Good Man (Bloomsbury)
- Award Winners
- Maame Blue for Bad Love (Jacaranda Books)
- Eley Williams for The Liar’s Dictionary (William Heinemann, Cornerstone)
- Nneoma Ike-Njoku for The Water House
- Graeme Armstrong for The Young Team (Pan Macmillan, Picador)
2020
- Prize Winner: Kathryn Hind for Hitch – £10,000 (Hamish Hamilton)
- Award Winners
- Stacey Halls for The Familiars (Zaffre, Bonnier Books) £5,400
- Isabella Hammad for The Parisian (Jonathan Cape, Vintage) £5,400
- Okeychukwu Nzelu for The Private Joys of Nnenna Maloney (Dialogue Books) £5,400
2019
- Prize Winner: James Clarke for The Litten Path (Salt) £10,000
- Award Winners
- Samuel Fisher for The Chameleon (Salt) £2,700
- Imogen Hermes Gowar for The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock (Harvill Secker) £2,700
- Ruqaya Izzidien for The Watermelon Boys (Hoopoe Fiction / AUC Press) £2,700
- Daisy Lafarge for Paul (Unpublished) £2,700
- Rebecca Ley for Sweet Fruit, Sour Land (Sandstone Press) £2,700
- Sophie Mackintosh for The Water Cure (Hamish Hamilton) £2,700
2018
- Prize Winner: Omar Robert Hamilton for The City Always Wins (Faber) £10,000
- Award Winners
- Sarah Day for Mussolini’s Island (Tinder Press) £3,250
- Clare Fisher for All the Good Things (Viking) £3,250
- Eli Goldstone for Strange Heart Beating (Granta Books) £3,250
- Lloyd Markham for Bad Ideas\Chemicals (Parthian) £3,250
- Masande Ntshanga for The Reactive (Jacaranda) £3,250
2017
- Prize winner: Daniel Shand for Fallow (Sandstone Press) £10,000
- Award winners
- Rowan Hisayo Buchanan for Harmless Like You (Hodder & Stoughton) £3,000
- Elnathan John for Born on a Tuesday (Cassava Republic) £3,000
- Kathleen Jowittt for Speak Its Name (self-published) £3,000
- Rob McCarthy for The Hollow Men (Hodder & Stoughton) £3,000
- Barney Norris for Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain (Transworld) £3,000
2016
- Prize winner: Alex Christofi for Glass (Serpents Tail) £10,000
- Award winners
- Irenosen Okojie for Butterfly Fish (Jacaranda Books Art Music) £5,000
- Natasha Pulley for The Watchmaker of Filigree Street (Bloomsbury Circus) £5,000
- Lucy Wood for Weathering (Bloomsbury) £5,000
2015
- Prize winner: Ben Fergusson for The Spring of Kasper Meier (Little, Brown) £10,000
- Award winners
- Emma Healey for Elizabeth is Missing (Viking) £5,000
- Zoe Pilger for Eat My Heart Out (Serpent’s Tail) £5,000
- Simon Wroe for Chop Chop (Viking) £5,000
2014
- Prize winner: Nathan Filer for The Shock of the Fall (HarperCollins) £10,000
- Award winners
- NoViolet Bulawayo for We Need New Names (Chatto) £3,750
- Sam Byers for Idiopathy (Fourth Estate) £3,750
- Mave Fellowes for Chaplin and Company (Jonathan Cape) £3,750
- Matt Greene for Ostrich (Weidenfeld) £3,750
2013
- Prize winner: Grace McCleen for The Land of Decoration (Chatto and Windus) £8,000
- Award winners
- Chibundu Onuzo for The Spider King’s Daughter (Faber) £7,000
- Francesca Segal for The Innocents (Chatto and Windus) £2,500
- Will Wiles for Care of Wooden Floors (Fourth Estate) £2,500
2012
- Prize winner: David Whitehouse for Bed (Canongate) £8,000
- Award winners
- Kalinda Ashton for The Danger Game (Tindal Street Press) £3,000
- Elizabeth Day for Scissors, Paper, Stone (Bloomsbury) £3,000
- Annabel Pitcher for My Sister Lives on the Mantlepiece (Orion/Indigo) £3,000
- Emma Jane Unsworth for Hungry, the Stars and Everything (The Hidden Gem Press) £3,000
2011
- Prize winner: Anjali Joseph for Saraswati Park (Fourth Estate) £10,000
- Award winners
- Laura Barton for Twenty-One Locks (Quercus) £6,000
- Simon Lelic Rupture (Picador) £2,500
- Robert Williams for Luke and Jon (Faber) £2,500
2010
- Prize winner: Nadifa Mohamed for Black Mamba Boy (HarperCollins) £10,000
- Award winners
- Evie Wyld for After the Fire, a Still Small Voice (Jonathan Cape) £7,000
- Jenn Ashworth for A Kind of Intimacy (Arcadia) £1,500
- Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani for I Do Not Come to You by Chance (Weidenfeld) £1,500
2009
- Prize winner: Samantha Harvey for The Wilderness (Jonathan Cape) £12,000
- Award Winner: Eleanor Catton for The Rehearsal (Granta) £8,000
2008
- David Szalay London and the South-East (Jonathan Cape) £10,000
- Ross Raisin God’s Own Country (Viking) £6,000
- Thomas Leveritt The Exchange Rate Between Love and Money (Harvill Secker) £2,000
- Anna Ralph The Floating Island (Arrow Books) £2,000
2007
- Will Davis for My Side of the Story (Bloomsbury) £10,000
- Adam Foulds for The Truth About These Strange Times (Weidenfeld) £2,500
- Cynan Jones for The Long Dry (Parthian) £2,500
- Julie Maxwell for You Can Live Forever (Jonathan Cape) £2,500
- Karen Mcleod for In Search of the Missing Eyelash (Jonathan Cape) £2,500
2006
- Nick Laird for Utterly Monkey (Fourth Estate/Harper Perennial) £10,000
- Peter Hobbs for The Short Day Dying (Faber & Faber) £5,000
- Nicola Monaghan for The Killing Jar (Chatto & Windus) £5,000
2005
- Susan Fletcher for Eve Green (Fourth Estate) £16,000
- Helen Walsh for Brass (Canongate) £2,000
- Diana Evans for 26a (Chatto & Windus) £2,000
2004
- Louise Dean for Becoming Strangers (Scribner) £8,000
- Hannah MacDonald for The Sun Road (Little, Brown) £6,000
- Anthony Cartwright for The Afterglow (Tindal Street Press) £3,000
- Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi for The Last Song of Dusk (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) £3,000
2003
- Jon McGregor for If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things (Bloomsbury) £10,000
- Sarah Hall for Haweswater (Faber and Faber) £6,000
- Stephanie Merritt for Gaveston (Faber and Faber) £4,000
- Elizabeth Garner for Nightdancing (Headline) £2,000
- Zoe Strachan for Negative Space (Picador) £2,000
- Adam Thirlwell for Politics (Jonathan Cape) £1,000
2002
- Hari Kunzru for The Impressionist (Hamish Hamilton) £8,000
- Rachel Seiffert for The Dark Room (William Heinemann) £5,000
- Shamim Sarif for The World Unseen (The Women’s Press) £4,000
- Helen Cross for My Summer of Love (Bloomsbury) £2,000
- Chloe Hooper for A Child’s Book of True Crime (Jonathan Cape) £2,000
- Susanna Jones for The Earthquake Bird (Picador) £2,000
- Gwendoline Riley for Cold Water (Jonathan Cape) £2,000
2001
- Zadie Smith for White Teeth (Hamish Hamilton) £6,000
- Justin Hill for The Drink and Dream Teahouse (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) £5,000
- Maggie O’Farrell for After You’d Gone (Headline Review) £5,000
- Vivien Kelly for Take One Young Man (Arrow) £4,000
- Mohsin Hamid for Moth Smoke (Granta) £2,500
- Patrick Neate for Musungu Jim and the Great Chief Tuloko (Penguin) £2,500
2000
- Jonathan Tulloch for The Season Ticket (Jonathan Cape) £10,000
- Julia Leigh for The Hunter (Faber and Faber) £7,000
- Susan Elderkin for Sunset Over Chocolate Mountains (Fourth Estate) £4,000
- Galaxy CrazeBy for The Shore (Jonathan Cape) £2,000
- Nicholas Griffin for The Requiem Shark (Little, Brown) £2,000
1999
- Elliot Perlman for Three Dollars (Faber and Faber) £7,000
- Catherine Chidgey for In a Fishbone Church (Picador Macmillan) £6,000
- Giles Foden for The Last King of Scotland (Faber and Faber) £4,000
- Dennis Bock for Olympia (Bloomsbury) £3,000
- Rajeev Balasubramanyam for In Beautiful Disguises (unpublished MS, to be published by Bloomsbury) £2,500
- Sarah Waters for Tipping the Velvet (Virago) £1,000
1998
- Kiran Desai for Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard (Faber and Faber) £10,000
- Nick Earls for Zigzag Street (Macmillan) £8,000
- Phil Whitaker for Eclipse of the Sun (Phoenix House) £5,000
- Gail Anderson-Dargatz for The Cure for Death by Lighting (Virago) £1,000
- Tobias Hill for Underground (unpublished) £1,000
1997
- Alex Garland for The Beach (Viking) £12,000
- Josie Barnard for Poker Face (Virago) £5,000
- Ardashir Vakil for Beach Boy (Hamish Hamilton) £5,000
- Diran Adebayo for Some Kind of Black (Virago) £1,500
- Sanjida O’Connell for Theory of Mind (Black Swan) £1,500
1996
- John Lanchester for The Debt to Pleasure (Macmillan) £8,000
- Meera Syal for Anita and Me (Flamingo) £7,000
- Rhidian Brook for The Testimony of Taliesin Jones (Flamingo) £5,000
- Louis Caron Buss for The Luxury of Exile (Jonathan Cape) £5,000
1995
- Robert Newman for Dependence Day (Century) £10,000
- Mark Behr for The Smell of Apples (Little, Brown) £8,000
- Martina Evans for Midnight Feast (unpublished, MS accepted by Heinemann) £3,000
- Rohit Manchanda for A Speck of Coaldust (unpublished) £1,000
- Juliet Thomas for Hallelujah Jordan (unpublished) £1,000
- Philippa Walshe for The Latecomer (unpublished) £1,000
- Madeleine Wickham for The Tennis Party (Black Swan) £1,000
1994
- Colin Bateman for Divorcing Jack (proof, HarperCollins) £12,000
- Nadeem Aslam for Season of the Rainbirds (Andre Deutsch) £10,000
- Guy Burt for After the Hole (Transworld) £1,000
- Frances Liardet for The Game (Macmillan) £1,000
- Jonathan Rix for Some Hope (Andre Deutsch) £1,000
1993
- Mark Blackaby for You’ll Never be Here Again (Gollancz) £10,000
- Andrew Cowan for Pig (Michael Joseph) £7,000
- Simon Corrigan for Tommy Was Here (Andre Deutsch) £5,000
- Joanna Briscoe for Mothers and Other Lovers (Phoenix) £2,000
- Olivia Fane for Landing on Clouds (Mandarin) £2,000
1992
- Liane Jones for The Dream Stone (Heinemann) £10,000
- Peter M Rosenburg for Kissing Through a Pane of Glass (Simon & Schuster) £5,000
- Tibor Fischer for Under the Frog (Polygon) £3,000
- Eugene Mullan for The Last of His Line (unpublished) £3,000
- Edward St Aubyn for Never Mind (Heinemann) £3,000
1991
- Amit Chaudhuri for A Strange and Sublime Address (Heinemann) £10,000
- Mark Swallow for Teaching Little Fang (Macmillan) £7,000
- Suzannah Dunn for Quite Contrary (Sinclair Stevenson) £2,000
- Lesley Glaister for Honour Thy Father (Secker & Warburg) £2,000
- Nino Ricci for Lives of the Saints (W H Allen) £2,000
- Simon Mason for The Great English Nude (Constable) £2,000
1990
- Robert McLiam for Wilson Ripley Bogle (Andre Deutsch) £16,000
- Elizabeth Chadwick for The Wild Hunt (Michael Joseph) £3,000
- Rosemary Cohen for No Strange Land (unpublished) £3,000
- Nicholas Shakespeare for The Vision of Elena Silves (Collins Harvill) £3,000
1989
- Nigel Watts for The Life Game (Hodder & Stoughton) £10,000
- William Riviere for Watercolour Sky (Hodder & Stoughton) £5,000
- Paul Houghton for Harry’s Last Wedding (unpublished) £2,000
- Alasdair McKee for Uncle Henry’s Last Stand (Chatto & Windus) £2,000
1988
- Alex Martin for The General Interruptor MS (Viking/Penguin) £6,500
- Candia McWilliam for A Case of Knives (Bloomsbury) £6,500
- Georgina Andrewes for Behind the Waterfall (Pandora Press) £2,000
- James Friel for Left of North (Macmillan) £2,000
- Glenn Patterson for Burning Your Own (Chatto & Windus) £2,000
- Susan Webster for Small Tales of a Town (Simon & Schuster) £2,000
1987
- James Maw for Hard Luck (Quartet Books) £8,000
- Peter Benson for The Levels (proof, Constable) £4,500
- Helen Flint for Return Journey (proof, Heinemann) £4,500
- Catherine Arnold for Lost Time (Hodder & Stoughton) £1,000
- H S Bhabra for Gestures (Michael Joseph) £1,000
- Lucy Pinney for The Pink Stallion (proof, Hodder & Stoughton) £1,000
1986
- Tim Parks for Tongues of Flames (Heinemann) £9,000
- Patricia Ferguson for Family, Myths and Legends (Deutsch) £4,500
- Philippa Blake for Mzungu’s Wife (MS, Bodley Head) £1,000
- Matthew Kneale for Whore Banquets accepted (MS, Gollancz) £1,000
- J F McLaughlin for The Road to Dilmun (unpublished) £1,000
- Kate Saunders for The Prodigal Father (proof, Jonathan Cape) £1,000
1985
- Susan Kay for Legacy (accepted MS Bodley Head) £12,500
- Gary Armitage for A Season of Peace (proof, Secker & Warburg) £1,000
- Elizabeth Ironside for A Very Private Enterprise (Hodder & Stoughton) £1,000
- Alice Mitchell for Instead of Eden (MS, W H Allen) £1,000
- Caroline Stickland for The Standing Hills (MS, Gollancz) £1,000
- George Schweiz for The Earth Abides For Ever (unpublished) £1,000
1984
- Ronald Frame for Winter Journey (accepted MS Bodley Head) £6,750
- Clare Nonhebel for Cold Showers (MS, Century Hutchinson) £6,750
- James Buchan for A Parish of Rich Women (accepted MS Hamish Hamilton) £1,000
- Helen Harris for Playing Fields in Winter (MS, Century Hutchinson) £1,000
- Gareth Jones for The Disinherited (Gollancz) £1,000
- Simon Rees for The Devil’s Looking Glass (MS, Methuen) £1,000
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