Lloyd Banwo wins The Author's Club Best First Novel Award

Ayanna Lloyd Banwo has won the The Author’s Club Best First Novel Award for When We Were Birds (Hamish Hamilton).

The guest adjudicator, novelist Louisa Young, presented the £2,500 award at a reception at the National Liberal Club in London yesterday (24th May). She said: “Set on an imagined version of Trinidad and written in a welcoming, poetic English Patois, When We Were Birds carries us off into a rich and funny story of love and morals, where the dead are just as real as the living – not as generic spooky ghosts, but as individuals, emotionally important to themselves as well as to the living.”

The shortlist included The Dictator’s Wife by Freya Berry (Headline Review); Tiepolo Blue by James Cahill (Sceptre); My Name Is Yip by Paddy Crewe (Doubleday); Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris (Duckworth); and The Whalebone Theatre by Joanna Quinn (Fig Tree).

The prize is for the debut novel of a British, Irish or UK-based author, first published in the UK. There is no age limit. The winning novel is selected by a guest adjudicator from a shortlist drawn up by a panel of Authors’ Club members, chaired by Lucy Popescu, who said: “This is a mesmerising debut about love and loss. Ayanna Lloyd Banwo’s lyrical prose and evocative imagery stayed with me long after the final page.”

This is the third time in recent years a book set in Trinidad has won. Claire Adam’s Golden Child (Faber & Faber) scooped the prize in 2020 and Ingrid Persaud’s Love After Love (Faber & Faber) won in 2021.