Launched 17 years ago, the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year award has become an unfailingly reliable guide to the best new British literary talent. Authors first spotted by the award have gone on to win or be shortlisted for a host of other prizes – the Man Booker (Zadie Smith, Caryl Phillips and Sarah Waters), the Wolfson (William Dalrymple), the Forward (Paul Farley), the TS Eliot (Simon Armitage).

The prize is open to British authors under 35 and is awarded at the Oxford literary festival each year.

2009 Sunday Times Young Writer Award

5th April, 2009- Ross Raisin has won The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award 2009 for his first novel,God's Own Country.

Ross Raisin received his prize, a cheque for £3500, from John Witherow, editor of The Sunday Times, at a special lunch held at The Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival. The runners-up, who each received a cheque for £500, were last year's winner, Adam Foulds for The Broken Word (Cape, £10), Henry Hitchings for The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English (J Murray £8.99) and Edward Hogan for Blackmoor(Pocket £7.99).

2009 Sunday Times Young Writer Award

Winner: Ross Raisin by God's Own Country

Other Shortlisted

Adam Foulds for The Broken Word

Henry Hitchings for The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English

Edward Hogan for Blackmoor

2008 Award Winner & Shortlist

Winner: Adam Foulds The Truth About These Strange Times (Weidenfeld)

2008 Other Shortlisted

Nikita Lalwani’s Gifted(Viking)

James McConnachie The Book of Love: In Search of the Kamasutra Kama Sutra (Atlantic)

Robert Macfarlane The Wild Places (Granta).

2007 Naomi Alderman Disobedience (Viking)

2004 Robert Macfarlane Mountains of the Mind

2003 William Fiennes The Snow Geese

2001 Zadie Smith White Teeth (Hamish Hamilton)

2000 Sarah Waters Affinity (A Virago V) (Little, Brown)

1999 Paul Farley The Boy from the Chemist is Here to See You (Picador Macmillan)

1998 Patrick French Liberty or Death: India's Journey to Independence and Division (HarperCollins)

1997 Francis Spufford I May be Some Time: Ice and the English Imagination (Faber & Faber)

1996 Katherine Pierpoint Truffle Beds (Faber & Faber)

1995 Andrew Cowan Pig (Penguin Fiction) (Michael Joseph Penguin)

1994 William Dalrymple City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi (HarperCollins)

1993 Simon Armitage Xanadu (Bloodaxe) Kid (Faber & Faber)

1992 Caryl Phillips Cambridge (Bloomsbury)

1991 Helen Simpson Four Bare Legs in a Bed and Other Stories (Heinemann)

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