The links below will take you to pages hosted at Literary Awards UK. Links to official sites are provided on detail pages.
International Literary Award Index, including UK & Ireland, click here
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Aye Write! Bank of Scotland Prize for Scottish Fiction is awarded to the Scottish writer who, in the opinion of the judges, has written the best novel in the previous year.
The prize is open to any full-length novel, written in English or Scots, by a writer born or living in Scotland or who has worked in Scotland for the 12 months prior to the award ceremony.
The inaugural prize in 2008 was won by Dan Rhodes for Gold. The shortlist contained the cream of Scottish writers with A L Kennedy, Ali Smith, Iain Banks, Alasdair Gray and John Burnside.
Arthur C. Clarke The Arthur C. Clarke Award is awarded every year to the best science fiction novel which received its first British publication during the previous calendar year. The Book Award is chosen by jury.
The Award was established with a generous grant from Arthur C. Clarke with the intention of encouraging science fiction in Britain. It is considered the UK's premier prize for science fiction literature.
The Award was set up in 1986 and the first winner, The Handmaid's Tale (New Windmill)
Betty Thrask (first novel under 35s)The Betty Trask Award for a first novel given by the Society of Authors to citizens of the Commonwealth under the age of 35. The awards have been established since 1984 and total £25,000 each year. The prizes are awarded to traditional or romantic novels, while those of an experimental nature are excluded. Awards are given for both published and unpublished works. They are funded from a bequest by the late Betty Trask, a reclusive author of over thirty romance novels More Details of past and present winners and shortlists
Booker (Man) PrizeNow in its fourtieth year the Man Booker Prize aims to reward the best novel of the year written by a citizen of the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland. The Man Booker judges are selected from the country's finest critics, writers and academics to maintain the consistent excellence of the prize. The winner of the Man Booker Prize receives £50,000 and both the winner and the shortlisted authors are guaranteed a worldwide readership plus a dramatic increase in book sales. Best of Booker Award Click Here.
The winners over the years reads like a Who's Who of fine authors. They include such luminaries as Peter Carey (2001, 1989), J.M. Coetzee (1999, 1983), Arundhati Roy (1997), Michael Ondaatje 1992), Kazuo Ishiguro (1989), Kingsley Amis 1986), Thomas Kennelly (1982), Salman Rushdie (1981), Iris Murdoch (1978) and V.S. Naipul (1971), to name but a few.Your mission, should you chose to accept it, is to match authors above winning years with the winning books. More details of past and present winners and shortlists
British Book AwardsThe Galaxy British Book Awards are given annually and promoted by the UK publishing industry trade journal Publishing News. They are also known as the Nibbies. One of Britain's most popular literary prizes, it has recently undergone a consolidation process to make it all a bit more manageable. Hopefully, with the reorganisation for this years award, it will settle down to a consistent format so that we can compare like with like as the years go byMore details of past and present winners and shortlists. More details of past and present winners and shortlists.
British Science Fiction AssociationThe BSFA awards are presented annually by the British Science Fiction Association, based on a vote of BSFA members and – in recent years – members of the British national science fiction convention (Eastercon).
The shortlists have now been announced for the BSFA awards for the best works of 2007, and also for a one-off award (to celebrate the BSFA’s fiftieth anniversary) for the best genre novel of 1958 More details of past and present winners and shortlists.
Commonwealth Writers PrizeThe Prize covers the Commonwealth regions of Africa, Europe and South Asia, The Caribbean and Canada, and South East Asia and the South Pacific. In Each of the four regions two prizes of £1,000 are awarded for the Best Book and for the Best First Book. Eight regional winners’ books are then judged by the A pan-Commonwealth panel. Authors win £10,000 for the overall Best Book and £5,000 for the Best First Book. Writers and judges come together in a final literary programme in a different Commonwealth country each year More details of past and present winners and shortlists.
Costa Book AwardsThe Costa Book Awards is one of the most prestigious and popular literary prizes in the UK and recognises some of the most enjoyable books of the year by writers based in the UK and Ireland.
The Costa Book Awards started life in 1971 as the Whitbread Literary Awards. From 1985 they were known as the Whitbread Book Awards until 2006, when Costa Coffee took over ownership - the year that both Costa and the Book Awards celebrated their 30 th anniversary.
Awards are given across five categories: First Novel; Biography; Novel; Poetry and Children's. The Costa Book of the year is then chosen from the shortlist of category winners. More details of past and present winners and shortlists.
back to topCrime Writers Association 'Daggers" (crime) The Crime Writers Association is responsible for administering Britain's leading crime fiction awards. Membership is open to any author who has had one crime novel produced by a bona fide publisher. It is this collective body, consisting of over 450 members,that decides upon the awards. There are seven Dagger Book Awards including the :Duncan Lawrie Dagger. the Duncan Lawrie International Dagger; CWA Ian Flemming Steel Dagger; CWA New Blood Dagger; CWA Dagger in the Library; the Debut Dagger and Cartier Diamond Dagger. The Ellis Peter Historical Award is also given.
Starting in 1955 major award was originally known as the Crossed Red Herring Award, then the Gold Dagger and is now the Duncan Lawrie Dagger. It carries a prize of £20,000, the largest award for crime fiction in the world for the best crime novel of the year More details of past and present winners and shortlists.
Desmond EliottThe Desmond Elliott Prize is a new biennial prize for a first novel written in English and published in the UK. Worth £10,000 to the winner, the prize is named after the literary agent and publisher, Desmond Elliott.
Charismatic, witty, and waspish, Elliott lived his life with sparkle. He drank only champagne, always crossed the Atlantic on Concorde and lunched at Fortnum and Mason. His office was in Mayfair and he had houses in St James’s and on Park Avenue. Desmond Elliott’s ethos to support new writers will live on in the shape of the prize.
When choosing the winner, a panel of 3 judges will look for a novel which creates a “buzz”, a book with “word of mouth” appeal. In addition, the judges will look for the following qualities:
* a novel which is a page-turner but which makes you pause for thought
* an intelligent book with broad appeal More details of past and present winners and shortlists.
Dublin IMPAC InternationalThe International IMPAC Dublin Literary Awardis the largest and most international prize of its kind. It involves libraries from all corners of the globe, and is open to books written in any language. The Book Award, an initiative of Dublin City Council, is a partnership between Dublin City Council, the Municipal Government of Dublin City, and IMPAC, a productivity improvement company which operates in over 50 countries. The Award is administered by Dublin City Public Libraries
The prize is €100,000 which is awarded to the author if the book is written in English. If the winning book is in English translation, the author receives €75,000 and the translator, €25,000. The winner also receives a trophy which is sponsored by Waterford Crystal. The 2008 will be given for a book published in 2006. This delay gives an opportunity for the consultative process to work well .Recent winners include notables such as; Colm Tóibín, Orhan Pamuk, Nicola Barker, David Malouf and Herta Muller amongst others.Out Stealing Horses
More details of past and present winners and shortlists.
Dylan Thomas Prize for Young WritersThe Dylan Thomas Prize is a new literary prize, named after the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, "awarded to the best published writer in English under the age of 30 from anywhere in the world". The prize is unique in its broad range of eligible material, covering novels, short story collections, poetry collections and plays. The winner of the prize receives £60,000. The prize was announced in 2004 and the inaugural prize was awarded in October 2006 to Rachel Trezise.
More details of past and present winners and shortlists.
Elizabeth Longford (Historical Biography)The Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography was established in 2003 in affectionate memory of Elizabeth Longford, the acclaimed biographer, and is sponsored by Flora Fraser and Peter Soros. It is administered by the Society of Authors.
This £5,000 award is presented annually for a historical biography published in the year preceding the prize
More details of past and present winners and shortlists.
Galaxy British Book AwardsThe Galaxy British Book Awards are given annually and promoted by the UK publishing industry trade journal Publishing News. They are also known as the Nibbies. One of Britain's most popular literary prizes, it has recently undergone a consolidation process to make it all a bit more manageable. Hopefully, with the reorganisation for this years award, it will settle down to a consistent format so that we can compare like with like as the years go byMore details of past and present winners and shortlists. More details of past and present winners and shortlists.
back to topGuardian First NovelEstablished in 1965 as the Guardian Fiction Award by The Guardian newspaper, the prize is worth £10,000 to the winner. In 1965 the prize money was 200 guineas (£210) and was awarded to a work of fiction by British or Commonwealth writer and published in the UK. The shortlist is announced in November each year and the winner in December.
The selection is made by a panel of critics and writers, chaired by the literary editor of the Guardian. This is the oldest and best-established of the awards sponsored by a newspaper. Sponsorship of a literary prize by one newspaper has a somewhat negative effect on publicity since other newspapers are less willing to publicise the winner, so given the quality of the choices Literary Awards UK is pleased to help spread the word..
In 1999 the prize was altered to Guardian First Book Award, being no longer restricted to fiction. It is rewarded to the best new literary talent, whether working in the field of fiction or non-fiction and across all genres
More details of past and present winners and shortlists.
Independent Foriegn Fiction PrizeThe Independent Foreign Fiction Prize was inaugurated by British newspaper The Independent to honour fiction in translation in the United Kingdom. The award was first launched in 1990 and ran for five years before falling into abeyance. It was revived in 2001 with the support of Arts Council England. Entries (fiction or short stories) must be published in English translation in the UK in the year preceding the award and the author must be alive at the time that the translation is published.
Uniquely, the prize acknowledges both the winning novelist and translator, each being awarded £5,000.
More details of past and present winners and shortlists.
Irish Book AwardsThe Irish Book Awards are annual awards made to books in various categories, the only literary awards supported by all Irish bookstores. First awarded in 2006, they grew out of the Hughes & Hughes bookstore's Irish Novel of the Year Prize which was inaugurated in 2000. Since 2007 the Awards have been an independent not-for-profit company. There are currently nine categories, seven of which are judged by the Irish Literary Academy, two by a public vote. There is also a lifetime achievement award. Categories are:More details of past and present winners and shortlists.
More details of past and present winners and shortlists.
James Tait-Black MemorialFounded in 1919, the James Tait Black Memorial Prizes are among the oldest and most prestigious book prizes awarded for literature written in the English Language. One is awarded for fiction and the second for biography. They are Britain's oldest literary awards. Based at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, part of the United Kingdom, the prizes were founded by Mrs Janet Coutts Black in memory of her late husband, James Tait Black, a partner in the publishing house of A & C Black Ltd. The winners are chosen by the Professor of English Literature at the University, who is assisted by PhD students in the shortlisting phase.
Major literary figures to receive the award include D. H. Lawrence, Arnold Bennett, John Buchan, Robert Graves, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Powell, Muriel Spark, J.G. Ballard, Angela Carter, Margaret Drabble and Salman Rushdie More details of past and present winners and shortlists.
John Llewellyn Rhys PrizeAbout the Award -The John Llewellyn Rhys Prize rewards the best work of literature (fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama) by a UK or Commonwealth writer aged 35 or under.
This important prize is awarded in honour of the writer John Llewellyn Rhys, who was killed in action in the Second World War. It award was founded by John Llewellyn Rhys's young wife, also a writer, who began the award to honour and celebrate his life.
Past winners include Margaret Drabble (1966), William Boyd (1982), Jeanette Winterson (1987), Ray Monk (1990), Matthew Kneale (1992) and David Mitchell (1999). Last year’s winner was Uzodinma Iweala (right) for Beasts of No Nation.The winner receive £5000, with the other shortlisted authors receiving £500 each
More details of past and present winners and shortlists.
back to top Man Booker PrizeNow in its fourtieth year the Man Booker Prize aims to reward the best novel of the year written by a citizen of the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland. The Man Booker judges are selected from the country's finest critics, writers and academics to maintain the consistent excellence of the prize. The winner of the Man Booker Prize receives £50,000 and both the winner and the shortlisted authors are guaranteed a worldwide readership plus a dramatic increase in book sales. Best of Booker Award Click Here.
The winners over the years reads like a Who's Who of fine authors. They include such luminaries as Peter Carey (2001, 1989), J.M. Coetzee (1999, 1983), Arundhati Roy (1997), Michael Ondaatje 1992), Kazuo Ishiguro (1989), Kingsley Amis 1986), Thomas Kennelly (1982), Salman Rushdie (1981), Iris Murdoch (1978) and V.S. Naipul (1971), to name but a few.Your mission, should you chose to accept it, is to match authors above winning years with the winning books. More details of past and present winners and shortlists.
Nobel Prize for Literature Yes, we know it's not a British Award, though Doris did win a year or so back, but it lives at Literary Awards UK.
Awarded by the Swedish Academy since 1901 to a person who has made the greatest contribution to the field of literature, as determined by the Nobel Committee. Nominations for the prize are made by members of the Academy, members of similar academies and societies, professors of literature and language, former Nobel laureates, and presidents of author organizations.
The monetary award is a share of the interest on the endowment made by Alfred Nobel, a Swedish chemist, which is held in trust by the Nobel Foundation. Yes, the one who invented dynamite. The prize carries a financial prize of 10 million Swedish kronor, that's about £817,000. Very handy. More details of past and present winners and shortlists.
Orange Broadband Prizes for Fiction and New WritersThe Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction (official site) is one of the United Kingdom's most prestigious literary prizes, awarded annually for the best original full-length novel by a female author of any nationality, written in English and published in the UK in the preceding year. No doubt the name will change once broadband is obsolete.
The winner of the book award receives £30,000, along with a bronze sculpture called the "Bessie" created by artist Grizel Niven, the sister of actor/writer David Niven.
2005 saw the introduction of the new Orange Broadband Award for New Writers which takes the form of a £10,000 bursary, provided by Arts Council England
More details of past and present winners and shortlists.
Orwell Prize for Politcal WritingThe Orwell Prize is the pre-eminent British prize for political writing. There are two annual awards: a Book Prize and a Journalism Prize. They are awarded to the book, and for the journalism, which is judged to have best achieved George Orwell’s aim to ‘make political writing into an art’. Homage to Catalonia, Down and Out in Paris and London, The Road to Wigan Pier, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Animal Farm and Orwell’s incomparable essays still resonate around the world as peerless examples of courageous independence of mind, steely analysis and beautiful writing.
The prizes are intended to encourage writing and thinking in this tradition. Clear, elegant expression, original ideas and hard argument about political issues that communicate to a wide audience are looked for. Style matters and content matters. The definition of politics is broad, and can include political and moral dilemmas, ideas and history, as well as issues in public policy, social and cultural concerns, in both fiction and non-fiction. The ambition of the prizes is to reward, celebrate and promote work that helps nurture the discussion of politics and that contributes to the quality of public life.
For the first time in 2007, broadcast and film journalism as well as internet publications were included in the scope of the prize.
The judges ask only that ‘writing must be of a kind that is aimed at or accessible to the public, and submissions will be judged equally for the excellence of their style and the originality of their content’.
More details of past and present winners and shortlists.
Romantic Novel of the Year Award (UK)The Romantic Novel of the Year is Romantic Novelists Associations major award and is open to all romantic fiction first published in the UK in the current year. The presentation is made at the RNA Awards Luncheon. In previous years this has taken place in April, but in 2008 it is being held in February.
Books all receive three reads from amongst a panel of over a hundred readers who are ordinary members of the public. The readers score the titles on such criteria as romantic content, readability, dialogue, characters, plot, style and setting. The books with the highest scores go on to a longlist and receive a fourth read. When that score has been added, the six books with the highest combined score form the shortlist for the year.
The whole shortlist is read by all the final judges to select the outright winner More details of past and present winners and shortlists.
Royal Society for Science PrizesSet up in 1988 as the "Science Book Prizes", the Royal Society Prizes for Science Books were originally named the Rhône-Poulenc Prizes for Science Books from 1990 - 2000, and the Aventis Prizes for Science Books from 2001 - 2006.
There are two categories: The Junior Prize, which is given to the best book written for under-14s, and the General Prize, for the best book written for a more general readership. Each prize is worth £10,000 to the winning author and £1,000 to the author of each shortlisted book.
The General Prize is chosen by a panel of five judges who select around twelve longlisted and then six shortlisted books and subsequently a winner. For the Junior Prize, initially a panel of five adult judges chooses the longlist and then the shortlist of six books. The task of picking the winner is then handed over to the people who should know best - young people aged up to fourteen in groups across the UK. More details of past and present winners and shortlists.
Saltire Society Scottish Literary AwardsThe Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year Award £5000 and
Scottish First Book of the Year Award £1500 (by an author who has not previously published a book) may be given for any book by an author or authors of Scottish descent or living in Scotland, or for any book which deals with the work or life
of a Scot or with a Scottish question, event or situation. The book might
be poetry, a novel, a play or other work of imaginative literature, or biography,
literary criticism or a study of any Scottish issue. Books of multiple authorship
would not normally qualify.
More details of past and present winners and shortlists.
Samuel Johnson (non-fiction)About the Award The BBC FOUR Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction celebrates originality and diversity in contemporary non-fiction. Named in honour of the great critic, essayist, lexicographer, poet and biographer, the BBC FOUR Samuel Johnson Prize is the world’s richest prize for non-fiction, recognising works published in English in the UK, regardless of the nationality of the author.
Rosie Boycott, the co-founder of Virago Press, Spare Rib magazine, and former editor of the Independent on Sunday, is chairing the judges for the 2008. She has been joined on the judging panel by Claire Armitstead, the Guardian's literary editor, and the poet Daljit Nagra. Also on the panel are the director of the Science Museum, professor Chris Rapley, and the documentary film-maker Hannah Rothschild.The panel judges books in all areas of non-fiction, including current affairs, history, politics, science, sport, travel, biography, autobiography and the arts.
The prize is worth £30,000 prize to the winner. More details of past and present winners and shortlists.
Somerset-Maugham Awards (under 35's)The Somerset Maugham Award is a British literary prize given each May by the Society of Authors. It is awarded to who they judge to be the best writer or writers under the age of thirty-five of a book published in the past year. The prize was instituted in 1947 by William Somerset Maugham and thus bears his name: the award is currently £6000 per winner, to be spent on foreign travel. The total fund for each year is £12000
Since 1964, multiple winners have usually been chosen in the same year. In 1975, the award was not given. The Award has twice been won by the son of a previous winner: Kingsley Amis (winner in 1955) was the father of Martin Amis (1974), and Nigel Kneale (1950) the father of Matthew Kneale (1988). More details of past and present winners and shortlists.
Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year 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.
More details of past and present winners and shortlists.
Sundial Scottish Arts Council Book AwardsThe Sundial Scottish Arts Council Book Awards – is Scotland’s richest book awards, and the fourth largest in the UK. The Awards, started in 1970s and have gone from strength to strength, reflecting the growing prominence and prestige of Scottish literature.
Winners of four categories of fiction, literary non-fiction, poetry and first book each receive an award of £5,000, and the opportunity to go forward and have their book considered for the title of Sundial Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year 2008, an accolade which will net the author a total prize of £25,000.
The awards are open to authors of Scottish descent or living in Scotland. Books of particular Scottish interest by other authors are eligible. Consideration is given to recently published work by both new and established writers. Submissions should come from publishers only.Previous winners include James Meek (2006); Kathleen Jamie (2005); James Robertson (2004); William Dalrymple ( 2003); Ali Smith ( 2002).
More details of past and present winners and shortlists.
Theakston's Crime Novel of the YearThe Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award is a crime-fiction award, sponsored by Theakston's Old Peculier. It is awarded annually at Harrogate Crime Writing Festival in the UK, held every July. The winner received £3000 and a small hand-carved oak beer cask carved by one of Britain's last coopers.
Novels eligible are those crime novels published in paperback any time during the previous year, thus making the shortlists seem more out-of-date than for most prizes.
It is also the only such crime-fiction award in the UK to be voted for partly by the public. Decisions of a jury-panel are also into into account, a fact not-much publicised by the award organisers, who are keen to emphasize the public-voting aspect of the award More details of past and present winners and shortlists.
Wales Book of the Year Wales Book of the Year prizes are awarded annually to the best Welsh and English language works in the fields of fiction and literary criticism by Welsh or Welsh interest authors.
iEstablished in 1992, the awards are currently administered by the Academi, and supported by the Arts Council of Wales, Welsh Assembly Government and the Welsh Books Council. In 2006, the prizes were each £10,000. In 2007, for the first time, four runners-up (two in each language) also each received £1000 More details of past and present winners and shortlists.
Wolfson History PrizeMore details of past and present winners and shortlists.
