Desmond Elliott Prize on hiatus for 2023 while Sunday Times Short Story Award could be discontinued

The Sunday Times Short Story Award is in danger of being discontinued, while the Desmond Elliott Prize will be paused next year in a bid to secure funding, organisers say.

News of issues facing the two awards comes just weeks after the cancellation of both the Costa Book Awards and the Blue Peter Book Awards.

Andrew Holgate, outgoing literary editor of the Sunday Times, told The Bookseller the Short Story Award “may well have to discontinue” if another sponsor cannot be found to succeed Audible, which withdrew a year ago. The prize gives £30,000 to the published author of a single story written in English and is the most lucrative award of its kind.

“We’ve had to delay [the prize] by a year as another sponsor is yet to be found,” he said. 

“We found it very hard after Audible left us to go to the Women’s Prize, to find another sponsor — I worked very hard to [secure that sponsorship deal].”

Meanwhile, the National Centre for Writing (NCW) is launching a “Season of Debuts”, a programme of events geared at championing the work of early career writers, to take place instead of the 2023 Desmond Elliott Prize.

The NCW has run the Desmond Elliott Prize as part of its Early Career Awards since 2020 after securing an initial three years’ worth of funding from the Desmond Elliott Charitable Trust. However, that pot of money was finite and the award now needs to find new funding. Organisers say the prize will not take place next year allowing the NCW to talk to funders, writers, publishers, booksellers, festival partners, media partners and others to develop its bid for the future of the prize.

In its place will be the Season of Debuts, which will shine a light on debut books and first-time authors to demonstrate how important it is to create platforms for early career writers “critical for our literary ecology”, the organisers say.

Chris Gribble, c.e.o of the NCW, said: “Early career writers are at the heart of NCW’s mission, and this programme is an important platform for that work. The pandemic resulted in a slew of brilliant first novels – and their writers – disappearing without the usual means of support that would have brought them a greater readership.

“Fewer trade promotions, no festivals or events to connect with readers in person, reduced review coverage and a pandemic narrative that readers seek comfort rather than the shock of the new in difficult times made for a perfect storm for debut novelists.

“The end of the Guardian First Book Award, the Costa First Novel Award and soon the Sunday Times Short Story Award means there are fewer opportunities than ever for the work of early career writers to be recognised and given a significant platform, and we want to do what we can to address that. So, instead of a single prize in 2023, NCW will deliver a ‘Season of Debuts’ which will shine a light on early career writers across all our activities, make our case for support clear, and allow us to continue championing first-time novelists while also building a bid to continue the Desmond Elliott Prize from 2024 onwards.”

The Season of Debuts programme will begin with the winner and shortlistees of the Desmond Elliott Prize 2022 appearing at the the Times and the Sunday Times Cheltenham Literature Festival this autumn and will run until spring 2023.

As part of the programme, the NCW will interview, commission and host debut novelists as part of existing NCW programmes, plus offer reading groups free online access to resources around these books and writers.

The programme will engage bookshops that have supported the Desmond Elliott Prize, championing and hosting books and writers in store and online, and will incorporate prize alumni in events, interviews and commissioning opportunities across NCW programmes to encourage and inform the coming generation of novelists. It will also commission, interview and host industry colleagues including publishers, agents, development agencies and competitions to discuss debut publishing.