Rachel Long and Caleb Azumah Nelson are on the shortlist for the Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Trust Young Writer of the Year Award 2022 announced on January 23, 2022.
The Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Trust Young Writer of the Year award is a literary prize awarded to a British author under the age of 35 for a published work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry since it started in 1991. Some of the previous winners of the prize administered by the Society of Authors have been Zadie Smith, Adam Foulds, and Raymond Antrobus.
The jury for 2022 is chaired by Sunday Times literary editor Andrew Holgate alongside writer and academic Sarah Moss, novelist and essayist Andrew O’Hagan, award-winning author and columnist Tahmima Anam, critic Claire Lowdon and writer and creative writing teacher Gonzalo C Garcia.
The organisers of the award said: “This calibre of talent reflects the ability of the prize to find and celebrate authors of the highest quality at the beginning of their careers; the award’s alumni list reads like a Who’s Who of modern British and Irish literature over the past 30 years, from Zadie Smith and Sarah Waters to Poet Laureate Simon Armitage and Robert Macfarlane.”
The shortlist for this year’s award features Caleb Azumah Nelson’s debut novel Open Water and Rachel Long’s poetry collection My Darling From The Lions (Picador).
Rachel Long tweeted, “Excited to be on the 2021 Sunday Times @YoungWriterYear shortlist, together with such bright and brilliant books and their writers.”
Caleb Azumah Nelson whose book won at the Costa Book Awards and is in the running for the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize tweeted, “Excited to say Open Water has been shortlisted for the 2021 Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award! Big congrats to Megan Nolan, @AnnaBeecher , @rachelnalong and @calflyn – an honour to be shortlisted with you all.”
The winner of the award goes home with £10,000 while each shortlistee gets £1,000.
