The Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken 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. It is administered by the Society of Authors and has been running since 1991.

History

The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award is said here to have originally run between 1991 and 2009, but there is evidence to confirm that it began twenty years earlier. At that time entries were confined to short stories and published in the newspaper itself. The 1974 winner was Charles Nicholl, who went on to become well-known for historical biographies. "The Ups and The Downs" was Charles Nicholl's disturbing and humorous account of a bad LSD trip in London. In 1999, Paul Farley's The Boy from the Chemist is Here to See You "was so well received", according to the Encyclopedia of British Writers, that "it was named Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award". It was re-invigorated with the support of literary agents Peters Fraser + Dunlop in 2015 under the new name Sunday Times / Peters Fraser + Dunlop Young Writer of the Year Award. In 2019 the University of Warwick took over as co-sponsor. The award was renamed the Sunday Times / University of Warwick Young Writer of the Year Award.

Name history

Winners

No award was made in 2002, 2005 or 2006.