Azumah Nelson and Nolan up for Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year

The Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Trust Young Writer of the Year Award has been revealed featuring Megan Nolan, Costa Prize-winning Caleb Azumah Nelson (pictured) and Cal Flynn among others.    

Irish novelist Nolan is nominated for her “darkly funny” debut novel Acts of Desperation (Jonathan Cape), while Azumah Nelson is picked for his south-east London-set novel Open Water (Viking) which won the Costa First Novel Award.

Highlands-based writer Flynn’s Islands of Abandonment (William Collins) was praised for her “eerie yet ultimately optimistic account of ecological diversity”. Londoner Rachel Long was shortlisted for her debut poetry collection, My Darling from the Lions and American author Anna Beecher’s Here Comes the Miracle (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) has also made the cut, described by judges as “a profoundly beautiful story about love and loss”.   

Celebrating its 30th year and now sponsored by The Charlotte Aitken Trust, the award is given annually to the best work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry by a British or Irish author aged 35 or under. Judges shortlisted five instead of the usual four authors, echoing a decision made by the 2020 judges.    

This year’s judges were writer and academic Sarah Moss, novelist and essayist Andrew O’Hagan, award-winning author and columnist Tahmima Anam, critic Claire Lowdon along with writer and creative writing teacher Gonzalo C Garcia, with the panel chaired by Sunday Times literary editor Andrew Holgate.   

The organisers of the award said: “This calibre of talent reflects the ability of the prize to find and celebrate authors of the highest quality at the beginning of their careers; the award’s alumni list reads like a Who’s Who of modern British and Irish literature over the past 30 years, from Zadie Smith and Sarah Waters to Poet Laureate Simon Armitage and Robert Macfarlane.”   

Moss said: “From a strong longlist, we chose the five books that showed the most inventive and promising writing. I’m confident that these are not only new books and new stories but new voices that will become part of our shared cultural life in the coming years. The rising generation inherits a shameful mess, but the breadth of genres and themes here attests to the artistic and intellectual energy of new writers.”    

Anam added: “What I love about all of these writers is that their work carries a deep moral urgency. I am moved and impressed by the virtuosity of the prose, but they also make me care, and that is a rare and precious quality in a writer.”    

Administered by The Society of Authors, the Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Trust Young Writer of the Year Award works with a growing network of partners. In addition to the prize money, which this year has been doubled to £10,000 with the shortlistees receiving £1,000, the winner will be offered a bespoke 10-week residency by the University of Warwick. The London Library, which returns as the host of the ceremony following last year’s digital edition, adds two years’ membership to the winner package, as well as a year’s membership for the shortlist. All shortlisted authors will be championed overseas by prize partner the British Council. Over the coming week, Granta will publish extracts from all five titles on granta.com.    

The 30th anniversary year also sees the introduction of a new partnership with Waterstones, which will be celebrating the shortlisted and winning authors for 2021 with bespoke content across all of its channels, including a specially commissioned piece for its blog, YouTube channel and Waterstones Plus newsletter, which reaches more than one million subscribers, alongside in-store point-of-sale to showcase the shortlist.    

Bea Carvalho, head of fiction at Waterstones, said: “The judges have chosen a brilliant shortlist, which showcases the sheer excellence of new writing being published across genres today: this level of talent among emerging writers signals a bright future for literature, bookshops and readers.  

"We are particularly thrilled to see Caleb Azumah Nelson, whose Open Water was selected by booksellers for the Waterstone Book of the Year 2021 shortlist, as well as Islands of Abandonment which is currently our Non-fiction Book of the Month. All five authors contribute something fresh, vibrant, and vital to our bookshelves and we are grateful for the opportunity to elevate their profiles through this shortlisting, and introduce many more readers to their words.”    

The 2021 winner will be announced in a ceremony at the London Library on 24th February.