We are delighted to announce that Tom Benn has won the 2022 Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Trust Young Writer of the Year Award for his novel OXBLOOD, published by Bloomsbury.
The award celebrates fiction, non-fiction and poetry by British or Irish authors aged 35 or under: recent winners include Sally Rooney, Max Porter, Sarah Howe, Raymond Antrobus and Cal Flyn. Its fuller alumni list includes Robert Macfarlane, Sarah Waters, Simon Armitage, Naomi Alderman, Caryl Phillips, Andrew Cowan and Zadie Smith, among others.
The other titles on this year’s shortlist were LARGER THAN AN ORANGE by Lucy Burns, MAPS OF OUR SPECTACULAR BODIES by Maddie Mortimer and SUPER-INFINITE by Katherine Rundell.
On Tom’s win, Sunday Times literary editor Johanna Thomas-Corr commented: ‘Tom’s story about the struggles of three generations of women in a Manchester crime clan has been rendered with care and specificity. The result is an atmospheric family saga that contains so much buried love, anger, grief, sexual jealousy and bitter disappointment… Yet somehow I emerged from it exhilarated!’
Chair of the 2022 judging panel Andrew Holgate added: ‘What a voice Tom Benn has got, what a feel for character and place, and what an uncompromising approach he has to his subject and material. He inhabits his milieu of 1980s Manchester with total conviction. We were bowled over as a judging panel by OXBLOOD.’
Sebastian Faulks, Chair of the Charlotte Aitken Trust, presented the award, having chaired the shortlist readings at Waterstones Piccadilly the previous night. The judging panel included critic and journalist Stig Abell, poet Mona Arshi, author Oyinkan Braithwaite, and novelist and earlier winner of the prize, Francis Spufford. Stig Abell said OXBLOOD ‘is a book to get lost headlong in’ and Mona Arshi called it ‘one of those rare books where place and time are conjured so effortlessly, the cast of characters drawn with so much ease and grace.’ Oyinkan Braithwaite called it ‘a propulsive, bountiful, fearless work of art’ and Francis Spufford added that OXBLOOD ‘shows us that there are few places literature can’t take us, if the writer is brave enough, and gifted enough.’
See more on news of Tom’s win and praise from the judges for OXBLOOD:
http://www.youngwriteraward.com/tombenn/#
Watch a video of Tom talking about OXBLOOD before the prize announcement:
https://twitter.com/YoungWriterYear/status/1630656368418889739?s=20
See an interview with Tom after winning the prize:
https://twitter.com/Waterstones/status/1635981676596834305?s=20
Read an extract from OXBLOOD in Granta:
https://granta.com/oxblood/
OXBLOOD follows three generations of women as they try to come to terms with the bloody legacy of their family in 1980s Manchester. Told in vivid, visceral prose, OXBLOOD was published in hardback in April 2022 and was also longlisted for the 2022 Gordon Burn Prize. The paperback edition will be published in April. Translation rights have recently been sold in Spain.
More Praise for OXBLOOD:
‘Brilliant’ – Denise Mina
‘The master of northern noir… a richly layered tale of a Mancunian crime clan set in the 1980s, of decaying mills, rising unemployment and rampant drug dealing. This atmospheric novel, which was also longlisted for the Gordon Burn prize 2022, explores the legacy of violent men through the three generations of working-class women left behind’ – Johanna Thomas-Corr, The Sunday Times
‘One of the most powerful and urgent writers of our times.’ – David Peace
‘If I read a better novel than OXBLOOD in 2022, it’ll be a blinding year for fiction. Tom Benn, please take a bow. Everybody else, please take note.’ – Joseph Knox author of SIRENS and TRUE CRIME
‘Powerful and so beautifully written – like David Peace wrote Alan Warner’s The Sopranos and so lyrical, too.’ – Harriet Tyce, Sunday Times-bestselling author of BLOOD ORANGE
‘Reading OXBLOOD is a compelling and deeply unsettling experience; this is a novel that glitters with the dark energy and lifeblood of its characters’ – Naomi Booth, author of THE LOST ART OF SINKING and EXIT MANAGEMENT
‘More than anything, I was enamoured with Benn's audacity: to tell this raw, violent, compassionate story; to use language in such a thrilling and fresh way; to explore the dark hearts of ordinary people, and to not look away when things get messy; to be, basically, this good.’ – D.W. Wilson, author of ONCE YOU BREAK A KNUCKLE
Credit: Benjamin Mathers
About Tom Benn:
Tom Benn is an author, screenwriter and lecturer from Stockport, England. His first novel, THE DOLL PRINCESS (Cape), was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Portico Prize, longlisted for the CWA’s John Creasey Dagger, and was The Daily Mirror's Book of the Week. His other novels are CHAMBER MUSIC (Cape) and TROUBLE MAN (Cape). He won runner-up prize in the 2019 International Desperate Literature Prize for Short Fiction, and his creative nonfiction has appeared in The Paris Review Daily. He won the BFI’s iWrite scheme for emerging screenwriters. His first film, Real Gods Require Blood, premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, and was nominated for Best Short Film at the BFI London Film Festival.
His latest novel, OXBLOOD, was published by Bloomsbury in 2022 and was longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize and won Tom the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award 2022.
Follow Tom on Twitter