The Society for Authors presented its awards at the end of June. The prize fund is the biggest in the UK, with this year over £100,000 shared between more than 30 writers, poets and illustrators. Nicola Griffith won a new award, the inaugural ADCI (Authors with Disabilities and Chronic Illnesses) Literary Prize, for her queer reimagining of Arthurian legend, Spear (Tordotcom Publishing).
Daniel Wiles won the Betty Trask Prize, given for a first novel by a writer under 35, for Mercia’s Take (Swift Press). Trespasses (Bloomsbury Publishing), by Louise Kennedy, won the McKitterick Prize, given for a first novel by a writer over 40. The Paul Torday Memorial Prize for a first novel by a writer over 60 went to Bonnie Garmus for Lessons in Chemistry (Doubleday, Penquin Random House). Poet Jay Gao won both an Eric Gregory Award and a Somerset Maugham