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The Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year Award 2025 Shortlist

Since 1991, the Young Writer of the Year Award has become perhaps our most prescient bellwether of future talent, with previous winners including Simon Armitage, Zadie Smith, Max Porter and Sally Rooney.

This year’s shortlist is rich in stylistic flair and thematic variety, ranging from an intensely powerful depiction of Rastafari boyhood in 1980s Bristol to a luminous meditation on how country living enriched three extraordinary writers’ creative careers.

The winner will be announced on Tuesday 18 March.

The Shortlist

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At once visceral and tender, this captivating coming-of-age novel from the acclaimed author of An Olive Grove in Ends is an unforgettable depiction of Rasta boyhood and the immigrant experience in 1980s England.
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£25.00
Hardback
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A mesmerising literary triple biography, Baker's beautifully narrated and deeply researched book reveals how life in the country shaped and enriched the writerly careers of Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Townsend Warner and Rosamond Lehmann.
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£20.00
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An incisive investigation into the crisis of mid-century American masculinity through the prism of four bisexual writers, Strange Relations profiles James Baldwin, John Cheever, Tennessee Williams and Carson McCullers, and their forging of a transformative new path.
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£16.99
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A visceral and stunning exploration of forgotten Britain, Preston's breathtaking debut follows two Cumbrian sheep farmers fighting for their existence as foot and mouth disease arrives in their community.
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Previous Winners

The New Life
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Paperback
£9.99 £8.49
Oxblood
Added to basket
Paperback
£9.99
Islands of Abandonment
Added to basket
Surge
Added to basket
Paperback
£12.99
The Perseverance
Added to basket
Kings of the Yukon
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Conversations with Friends
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Grief Is the Thing with Feathers
Added to basket
Loop of Jade
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Paperback
£12.00
God's Own Country
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The Truth About These Strange Times
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Disobedience
Added to basket
Mountains Of The Mind
Added to basket
The Snow Geese
Added to basket
White Teeth
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Paperback
£9.99
Affinity
Added to basket
Paperback
£10.99
Liberty or Death
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