Betty Trask Award

The Betty Trask Prize and Awards are for first novels written by authors under the age of 35, who reside in a current or former Commonwealth nation. Each year the awards total £20,000, with one author receiving a larger prize amount, called the "Prize", and the remainder given to one or more other writers, called the "Awards". The award was established in 1984 by the Society of Authors, at the bequest of the late Betty Trask, a reclusive author of over thirty romance novels. The awards are given to traditional or romantic novels, rather than those of an experimental style, and can be for published or unpublished works.

List of award and prize winners

1980s

Betty Trask Award winners, 1984-1989

Year	Author	Title	Prize
1984	Ronald Frame	Winter Journey	£6,750
	Clare Nonhebel	Cold Showers	£6,750
	James Buchan	A Parish of Rich Women	£1,000
	Helen Harris	Playing Fields in Winter	£1,000
	Gareth Jones	The Disinherited	£1,000
	Simon Rees	The Devil's Looking Glass	£1,000
1985	Susan Kay	Legacy	£12,500
	Gary Armitage	A Season of Peace	£1,000
	Elizabeth Ironside	A Very Private Enterprise	£1,000
	Alice Mitchell	Instead of Eden	£1,000
	George Schweiz	The Earth Abides For Ever	£1,000
	Caroline Stickland	The Standing Hills	£1,000
1986	Tim Parks	Tongues of Flame	£9,000
	Patricia Ferguson	Family, Myths and Legends	£4,500
	Philippa Blake	Mzungu's Wife	£1,000
	Matthew Kneale	Whore Banquets	£1,000
	J. F. McLaughlin	The Road to Dilmun	£1,000
	Kate Saunders	The Prodigal Father	£1,000
1987	James Maw	Hard Luck	£8,000
	Peter Benson	The Levels	£4,500
	Helen Flint	Return Journey	£4,500
	Catherine Arnold	Lost Time	£1,000
	H. S. Bhabra	Gestures	£1,000
	Lucy Pinney	The Pink Stallion	£1,000
1988	Alex Martin	The General Interruptor MS	£6,500
	Candia McWilliam	A Case of Knives	£6,500
	Georgina Andrewes	Behind the Waterfall	£2,000
	James Friel	Left of North	£2,000
	Glenn Patterson	Burning Your Own	£2,000
	Susan Webster	Small Tales of a Town	£2,000
1989	Nigel Watts	The Life Game	£10,000
	William Riviere	Watercolour Sky	£5,000
	Paul Houghton	Harry's Last Wedding	£2,000
	Alasdair McKee	Uncle Henry's Last Stand	£2,000

1990s

Betty Trask Award winners, 1990-1999

Year	Author	Title	Prize
1990	Robert McLiam Wilson	Ripley Bogle	£16,000
	Elizabeth Chadwick	The Wild Hunt	£3,000
	Rosemary Cohen	No Strange Land	£3,000
	Nicholas Shakespeare	The Vision of Elena Silves	£3,000
1991	Amit Chaudhuri	A Strange and Sublime Address	£10,000
	Mark Swallow	Teaching Little Fang	£7,000
	Suzannah Dunn	Quite Contrary	£2,000
	Lesley Glaister	Honour Thy Father	£2,000
	Simon Mason	The Great English Nude	£2,000
	Nino Ricci	Lives of the Saints	£2,000
1992	Peter M. Rosenburg	Kissing Through a Pane of Glass	£5,000
	Tibor Fischer	Under the Frog	£3,000
	Liane Jones	The Dream Stone	£3,000
	Eugene Mullan	The Last of His Line	£3,000
	Edward St Aubyn	Never Mind	£3,000
1993	Mark Blackaby	You'll Never be Here Again	£10,000
	Andrew Cowan	Pig	£7,000
	Simon Corrigan	Tommy Was Here	£5,000
	Joanna Briscoe	Mothers and Other Lovers	£2,000
	Olivia Fane	Landing on Clouds	£2,000
1994	Colin Bateman	Divorcing Jack	£12,000
	Nadeem Aslam	Season of the Rainbirds	£10,000
	Guy Burt	After the Hole	£1,000
	Frances Liardet	The Game	£1,000
	Jonathan Rix	Some Hope	£1,000
1995	Robert Newman	Dependence Day	£10,000
	Mark Behr	The Smell of Apples	£8,000
	Martina Evans	Midnight Feast	£3,000
	Rohit Manchanda	A Speck of Coaldust	£1,000
	Juliet Thomas	Hallelujah Jordan	£1,000
	Philippa Walshe	The Latecomer	£1,000
	Madeleine Wickham	The Tennis Party	£1,000
1996	John Lanchester	The Debt to Pleasure	£8,000
	Meera Syal	Anita and Me	£7,000
	Rhidian Brook	The Testimony of Taliesin Jones	£5,000
	Louis Caron Buss	The Luxury of Exile	£5,000
1997	Alex Garland	The Beach	£12,000
	Josie Barnard	Poker Face	£5,000
	Ardashir Vakil	Beach Boy	£5,000
	Diran Adebayo	Some Kind of Black	£1,500
	Sanjida O'Connell	Theory of Mind	£1,500
1998	Kiran Desai	Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard	£10,000
	Nick Earls	Zigzag Street	£8,000
	Phil Whitaker	Eclipse of the Sun	£5,000
	Tobias Hill	Underground	£1,000
	Gail Anderson-Dargatz	The Cure for Death by Lightning	£1,000
1999	Elliot Perlman	Three Dollars	£7,000
	Catherine Chidgey	In a Fishbone Church	£6,000
	Giles Foden	The Last King of Scotland	£4,000
	Dennis Bock	Olympia	£3,000
	Rajeev Balasubramanyam	In Beautiful Disguises	£2,500
	Sarah Waters	Tipping the Velvet	£1,000

2000s

Since 2009, the Betty Trask Prize has been given to a single author; the remaining receive the Betty Trask Award. A blue ribbon () indicates the winner for that year.

Betty Trask Award winners, 2000-2009

Year	Author	Title	Prize	Ref.
2000	Jonathan Tulloch	The Season Ticket	£10,000
	Julia Leigh	The Hunter	£7,000
	Susan Elderkin	Sunset Over Chocolate Mountains	£4,000
	Galaxy Craze	By the Shore	£2,000
	Nicholas Griffin	The Requiem Shark	£2,000
2001	Zadie Smith	White Teeth	£8,000
	Justin Hill	The Drink and Dream Teahouse	£5,000
	Maggie O'Farrell	After You'd Gone	£5,000
	Vivien Kelly	Take One Young Man	£4,000
	Mohsin Hamid	Moth Smoke	£2,500
	Patrick Neate	Musungu Jim and the Great Chief Tuloko	£2,500
2002	Hari Kunzru	The Impressionist	£8,000
	Rachel Seiffert	The Dark Room	£5,000
	Shamim Sarif	The World Unseen	£4,000
	Helen Cross	My Summer of Love	£2,000
	Chloe Hooper	A Child's Book of True Crime	£2,000
	Susanna Jones	The Earthquake Bird	£2,000
	Gwendoline Riley	Cold Water	£2,000
2003	Jon McGregor	If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things	£10,000
	Sarah Hall	Haweswater	£6,000
	Stephanie Merritt	Gaveston	£4,000
	Elizabeth Garner	Nightdancing	£2,000
	Zoë Strachan	Negative Space	£2,000
	Adam Thirlwell	Politics	£1,000
2004	Louise Dean	Becoming Strangers	£8,000
	Hannah MacDonald	The Sun Road	£6,000
	Anthony Cartwright	The Afterglow	£3,000
	Siddharth Dhanvant Sanghvi	The Last Song of Dusk	£3,000
2005	Susan Fletcher	Eve Green	£16,000
	Diana Evans	26a	£2,000
	Helen Walsh	Brass	£2,000
2006	Nick Laird	Utterly Monkey	£10,000
	Peter Hobbs	The Short Day Dying	£5,000
	Nicola Monaghan	The Killing Jar	£5,000
2007	Will Davis	My Side of the Story	£10,000
	Adam Foulds	The Truth About These Strange Times	£2,500
	Cynan Jones	The Long Dry	£2,500
	Julie Maxwell	You Can Live Forever	£2,500
	Karen Mcleod	In Search of the Missing Eyelash	£2,500
2008	David Szalay	London and the South	£10,000
	Ross Raisin	God's Own Country	£6,000
	Thomas Leveritt	The Exchange Rate Between Love and Money	£2,000
	Anna Ralph	The Floating Island	£2,000
2009	Samantha Harvey	The Wilderness	£12,000
	Eleanor Catton	The Rehearsal	£8,000

2010s

Betty Trask Award winners, 2010-2019

Year	Author	Title	Prize	Ref.
2010	Nadifa Mohamed	Black Mamba Boy	£10,000
	Evie Wyld	After the Fire, A Still Small Voice	£7,000
	Jenn Ashworth	A Kind of Intimacy	£1,500
	Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani	I Do Not Come To You By Chance	£1,500
2011	Anjali Joseph	Saraswati Park	£10,000
	Laura Barton	Twenty-One Locks	£6,000
	Simon Lelic	Rupture	£2,500
	Robert Williams	Luke and Jon	£2,500
2012	David Whitehouse	Bed	£8,000
	Kalinda Ashton	The Danger Game	£3,000
	Elizabeth Day	Scissors, Paper, Stone	£3,000
	Annabel Pitcher	My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece	£3,000
	Emma Jane Unsworth	Hungry the Stars and Everything	£3,000
2013	Grace McCleen	The Land of Decoration	£8,000
	Chibundu Onuzo	The Spider King's Daughter	£7,000
	Francesca Segal	The Innocents	£2,500
	Will Wiles	Care of Wooden Floors	£2,500
2014	Nathan Filer	The Shock of the Fall	£10,000
	NoViolet Bulawayo	We Need New Names	£3,750
	Sam Byers	Idiopathy	£3,750
	Mave Fellowes	Chaplin and Company	£3,750
	Matt Greene	Ostrich	£3,750
2015	Ben Fergusson	The Spring of Kasper Meier	£10,000
	Emma Healey	Elizabeth is Missing	£5,000
	Zoe Pilger	Eat My Heart Out	£5,000
	Simon Wroe	Chop Chop	£5,000
2016	Alex Christofi	Glass	£10,000
	Irenosen Okojie	Butterfly Fish	£5,000
	Natasha Pulley	The Watchmaker of Filigree Street	£5,000
	Lucy Wood	Wood for Weathering	£5,000
2017	Daniel Shand	Fallow	£10,000
	Rowan Hisayo Buchanan	Harmless Like You	£3,000
	Elnathan John	Born on a Tuesday	£3,000
	Kathleen Jowitt	Speak Its Name	£3,000
	Rob McCarthy	The Hollow Men	£3,000
	Barney Norris	Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain	£3,000
2018	Omar Robert Hamilton	The City Always Wins	£10,000
	Sarah Day	Mussolini's Island	£3,250
	Clare Fisher	All the Good Things	£3,250
	Eli Goldstone	Strange Heart Beating	£3,250
	Lloyd Markham	Bad Ideas/Chemicals	£3,250
	Masande Ntshanga	The Reactive	£3,250
2019	James Clarke	The Litten Path	£10,000
	Samuel Fisher	The Chameleon	£2,700
	Imogen Hermes Gowar	The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock	£2,700
	Ruqaya Izzidien	The Watermelon Boys	£2,700
	Daisy Lafarge	Paul	£2,700
	Rebecca Ley	Sweet Fruit, Sour Land	£2,700
	Sophie Mackintosh	The Water Cure	£2,700

2020s

Betty Trask Award winners, 2020-present

Year	Author	Title	Prize	Ref.
2020	Kathryn Hind	Hitch	£10,000
	Stacey Halls	The Familiars	£5,400
	Isabella Hammad	The Parisian	£5,400
	Okeychukwu Nzelu	The Private Joys of Nnenna Maloney	£5,400
2021	Thomas McMullan	The Last Good Man
	Graeme Armstrong	The Young Team
	Maame Blue	Bad Love
	Kiran Millwood Hargrave	The Mercies
	Eley Williams	The Liar’s Dictionary
	Nneoma Ike-Njoku	The Water House
2022	Will McPhail	IN: The Graphic Novel
	A. K. Blakemore	The Manningtree Witches
	Natasha Brown	Assembly
	Caleb Azumah Nelson	Open Water
	Megan Nolan	Acts of Desperation
2023	Daniel Wiles	Mercia’s Take	£10,000
	Paddy Crewe	My Name is Yip
	Imogen Crimp	A Very Nice Girl
	Maddie Mortimer	Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies

External links

• The Betty Trask Prizes and Awards: Past Winners