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are given to traditional or romantic novels, rather than those of an experimental style, and can be for published or unpublished works.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
Note: Beginning in 2009, the "Betty Trask Prize" is given to one author; the remaining receive the "Betty Trask Award"1980s
1984- Ronald Frame for Winter Journey - £6,750
- Clare Nonhebel for Cold Showers - £6,750
- James Buchan for A Parish of Rich Women - £1,000
- Helen Harris for Playing Fields in Winter - £1,000
- Gareth Jones for The Disinherited - £1,000
- Simon Rees for The Devil's Looking Glass - £1,000
- Susan Kay for Legacy - £12,500
- Gary Armitage for A Season of Peace - £1,000
- Elizabeth Ironside for A Very Private Enterprise - £1,000
- Alice Mitchell for Instead of Eden - £1,000
- Caroline Stickland for The Standing Hills - £1,000
- George Schweiz for The Earth Abides For Ever - £1,000
- Tim Parks for Tongues of Flame - £9,000
- Patricia Ferguson for Family, Myths and Legends - £4,500
- Philippa Blake for Mzungu's Wife - £1,000
- Matthew Kneale for Whore Banquets - £1,000
- J. F. McLaughlin for The Road to Dilmun - £1,000
- Kate Saunders for The Prodigal Father - £1,000
- James Maw for Hard Luck - £8,000
- Peter Benson for The Levels - £4,500
- Helen Flint for Return Journey - £4,500
- Catherine Arnold for Lost Time - £1,000
- H. S. Bhabra for Gestures - £1,000
- Lucy Pinney for The Pink Stallion - £1,000
- Alex Martin for The General Interruptor MS - £6,500
- Candia McWilliam for A Case of Knives - £6,500
- Georgina Andrewes for Behind the Waterfall - £2,000
- James Friel for Left of North - £2,000
- Glenn Patterson for Burning Your Own - £2,000
- Susan Webster for Small Tales of a Town - £2,000
- Nigel Watts for The Life Game - £10,000
- William Riviere for Watercolour Sky - £5,000
- Paul Houghton for Harry's Last Wedding - £2,000
- Alasdair McKee for Uncle Henry's Last Stand - £2,000
1990s
- Robert McLiam Wilson for Ripley Bogle - £16,000
- Elizabeth Chadwick for The Wild Hunt - £3,000
- Rosemary Cohen for No Strange Land - £3,000
- Nicholas Shakespeare for The Vision of Elena Silves - £3,000
- Amit Chaudhuri for A Strange and Sublime Address - £10,000
- Mark Swallow for Teaching Little Fang - £7,000
- Suzannah Dunn for Quite Contrary - £2,000
- Lesley Glaister for Honour Thy Father - £2,000
- Simon Mason for The Great English Nude - £2,000
- Nino Ricci for Lives of the Saints - £2,000
- Peter M. Rosenburg for Kissing Through a Pane of Glass - £5,000
- Tibor Fischer for Under the Frog - £3,000
- Liane Jones for The Dream Stone - £3,000
- Eugene Mullan for The Last of His Line - £3,000
- Edward St Aubyn for Never Mind - £3,000
- Mark Blackaby for You'll Never be Here Again - £10,000
- Andrew Cowan for Pig - £7,000
- Simon Corrigan for Tommy Was Here - £5,000
- Joanna Briscoe for Mothers and Other Lovers - £2,000
- Olivia Fane for Landing on Clouds - £2,000
- Colin Bateman for Divorcing Jack - £12,000
- Nadeem Aslam for Season of the Rainbirds - £10,000
- Guy Burt for After the Hole - £1,000
- Frances Liardet for The Game - £1,000
- Jonathan Rix for Some Hope - £1,000
- Robert Newman for Dependence Day - £10,000
- Mark Behr for The Smell of Apples - £8,000
- Martina Evans for Midnight Feast - £3,000
- Rohit Manchanda for A Speck of Coaldust - £1,000
- Juliet Thomas for Hallelujah Jordan - £1,000
- Philippa Walshe for The Latecomer - £1,000
- Madeleine Wickham for The Tennis Party - £1,000
- John Lanchester for The Debt to Pleasure - £8,000
- Meera Syal for Anita and Me - £7,000
- Rhidian Brook for The Testimony of Taliesin Jones - £5,000
- Louis Caron Buss for The Luxury of Exile - £5,000
- Alex Garland for The Beach - £12,000
- Josie Barnard for Poker Face - £5,000
- Ardashir Vakil for Beach Boy - £5,000
- Diran Adebayo for Some Kind of Black - £1,500
- Sanjida O'Connell for Theory of Mind - £1,500
- Kiran Desai for Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard for £10,000
- Nick Earls for Zigzag Street - £8,000
- Phil Whitaker for Eclipse of the Sun - £5,000
- Gail Anderson-Dargatz for The Cure for Death by Lightning - £1,000
- Tobias Hill for Underground - £1,000
- Elliot Perlman for Three Dollars - £7,000
- Catherine Chidgey for In a Fishbone Church - £6,000
- Giles Foden for The Last King of Scotland - £4,000
- Dennis Bock for Olympia - £3,000
- Rajeev Balasubramanyam for In Beautiful Disguises - £2,500
- Sarah Waters for Tipping the Velvet - £1,000
2000s
- Jonathan Tulloch for The Season Ticket - £10,000
- Julia Leigh for The Hunter - £7,000
- Susan Elderkin for Sunset Over Chocolate Mountains - £4,000
- Galaxy Craze for By The Shore - £2,000
- Nicholas Griffin for The Requiem Shark - £2,000
- Zadie Smith for White Teeth - £8,000
- Justin Hill for The Drink and Dream Teahouse - £5,000
- Maggie O'Farrell for After You'd Gone - £5,000
- Vivien Kelly for Take One Young Man - £4,000
- Mohsin Hamid for Moth Smoke - £2,500
- Patrick Neate for Musungu Jim and the Great Chief Tuloko - £2,500
- Hari Kunzru for The Impressionist - £8,000
- Rachel Seiffert for The Dark Room - £5,000
- Shamim Sarif for The World Unseen - £4,000
- Helen Cross for My Summer of Love - £2,000
- Chloe Hooper for A Child's Book of True Crime - £2,000
- Susanna Jones for The Earthquake Bird - £2,000
- Gwendoline Riley for Cold Water - £2,000
- Jon McGregor for If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things - £10,000
- Sarah Hall for Haweswater - £6,000
- Stephanie Merritt for Gaveston - £4,000
- Elizabeth Garner for Nightdancing - £2,000
- Zoë Strachan for Negative Space - £2,000
- Adam Thirlwell for Politics - £1,000
- Louise Dean for Becoming Strangers - £8,000
- Hannah MacDonald for The Sun Road - £6,000
- Anthony Cartwright for The Afterglow - £3,000
- Siddharth Dhanvant Sanghvi for The Last Song of Dusk - £3,000
- Susan Fletcher for Eve Green - £16,000
- Diana Evans for 26a - £2,000
- Helen Walsh for Brass - £2,000
- Nick Laird for Utterly Monkey - £10,000
- Peter Hobbs for The Short Day Dying - £5,000
- Nicola Monaghan for The Killing Jar - £5,000
- Will Davis for My Side of the Story - £10,000
- Adam Foulds for The Truth About These Strange Times - £2,500
- Cynan Jones for The Long Dry - £2,500
- Julie Maxwell for You Can Live Forever - £2,500
- Karen Mcleod for In Search of the Missing Eyelash - £2,500
- David Szalay for London and the South-East - £10,000
- Ross Raisin for God's Own Country - £6,000
- Thomas Leveritt for The Exchange Rate Between Love and Money for £2,000
- Anna Ralph for The Floating Island - £2,000
- Samantha Harvey for The Wilderness - £12,000
- Eleanor Catton for The Rehearsal - £8,000
2010s
- Nadifa Mohamed for Black Mamba Boy - £10,000
- Evie Wyld for After the Fire, A Still Small Voice - £7,000
- Jenn Ashworth for A Kind of Intimacy - £1,500
- Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani for I Do Not Come to You by Chance - £1,500
- Anjali Joseph for Saraswati Park - £10,000
- Laura Barton for Twenty-One Locks - £6,000
- Simon Lelic for Rupture - £2,500
- Robert Williams for Luke and Jon - £2,500
- David Whitehouse for Bed - £8,000
- Kalinda Ashton for The Danger Game - £3,000
- Elizabeth Day for Scissors, Paper, Stone - £3,000
- Annabel Pitcher for My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece for £3,000
- Emma Jane Unsworth for Hungry the Stars and Everything - £3,000
- Grace McCleen for The Land of Decoration - £8,000
- Chibundu Onuzo for The Spider King's Daughter - £7,000
- Francesca Segal for The Innocents - £2,500
- Will Wiles for Care of Wooden Floors - £2,500
- Nathan Filer for The Shock Of The Fall - £10,000
- NoViolet Bulawayo for We Need New Names - £3,750
- Sam Byers for Idiopathy - £3,750
- Mave Fellowes for Chaplin and Company - £3,750
- Matt Greene for Ostrich - £3,750
- Ben Fergusson for The Spring of Kasper Meier - £10,000
- Emma Healey for Elizabeth is Missing - £5,000
- Zoe Pilger for Eat My Heart Out - £5,000
- Simon Wroe for Chop Chop - £5,000
- Alex Christofi for Glass - £10,000
- Irenosen Okojie for Butterfly Fish - £5,000
- Natasha Pulley for The Watchmaker of Filigree Street - £5,000
- Lucy Wood for Wood for Weathering - £5,000
- Daniel Shand for Fallow - £10,000
- Rowan Hisayo Buchanan for Harmless Like You - £3,000
- Elnathan John for Born on a Tuesday - £3,000
- Kathleen Jowitt for Speak Its Name - £3,000
- Rob McCarthy for The Hollow Men - £3,000
- Barney Norris for Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain - £3,000
- Omar Robert Hamilton for The City Always Wins - £10,000
- Sarah Day for Mussolini's Island - £3,250
- Clare Fisher for All the Good Things - £3,250
- Eli Goldstone for Strange Heart Beating - £3,250
- Lloyd Markham for Bad Ideas/Chemicals - £3,250
- Masande Ntshanga for The Reactive - £3,250
- James Clarke for The Litten Path - £10,000
- Samuel Fisher for The Chameleon - £2,700
- Imogen Hermes Gowar for The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock - £2,700
- Ruqaya Izzidien for The Watermelon Boys - £2,700
- Daisy Lafarge for Paul - £2,700
- Rebecca Ley for Sweet Fruit, Sour Land - £2,700
- Sophie Mackintosh for The Water Cure - £2,700
2020s
- Kathryn Hind for Hitch - £10,000
- Stacey Halls for The Familiars - £5,400
- Isabella Hammad for The Parisian - £5,400
- Okeychukwu Nzelu for The Private Joys of Nnenna Maloney - £5,400