The Betty Trask Prize and Awards are for first novels written by authors under the age of 35, who reside in a current or former Commonwealth nation. The awards were established in 1984 by the Society of Authors, at the bequest of the late Betty Trask, a reclusive author of over thirty romance novels.[1] Each year the awards total £20,000, with one author receiving a larger prize, and the remainder given to one or more other writers.[2] The awards are given to traditional or romantic novels, rather than those of an experimental style, and can be for published or unpublished works.[3]
Note: This list is not complete for each year.
| Year | Author | Book | Award |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1984 | Ronald Frame | Winter Journey | £6,750 |
| Clare Nonhebel | Cold Showers | £6,750 | |
| James Buchan | A Parish of Rich Women | £1,000 | |
| Helen Harris | Playing Fields in Winter | £1,000 | |
| Gareth Jones | The Disinherited | £1,000 | |
| Simon Rees | The Devil's Looking Glass | £1,000 | |
| 1985 | Susan Kay | Legacy | £12,500 |
| Gary Armitage | A Season of Peace | £1,000 | |
| Elizabeth Ironside | A Very Private Enterprise | £1,000 | |
| Alice Mitchell | Instead of Eden | £1,000 | |
| Caroline Stickland | The Standing Hills | £1,000 | |
| George Schweiz | The Earth Abides For Ever | £1,000 | |
| 1986 | Tim Parks | Tongues of Flame | £9,000 |
| Patricia Ferguson | Family, Myths and Legends | £4,500 | |
| Philippa Blake | Mzungu's Wife | £1,000 | |
| Matthew Kneale | Whore Banquets | £1,000 | |
| J. F. McLaughlin | The Road to Dilmun | £1,000 | |
| Kate Saunders | The Prodigal Father | £1,000 | |
| 1987 | James Maw | Hard Luck | £8,000 |
| Peter Benson | The Levels | £4,500 | |
| Helen Flint | Return Journey | £4,500 | |
| Catherine Arnold | Lost Time | £1,000 | |
| H. S. Bhabra | Gestures | £1,000 | |
| Lucy Pinney | The Pink Stallion | £1,000 | |
| 1988 | Alex Martin | The General Interruptor MS | £6,500 |
| Candia McWilliam | A Case of Knives | £6,500 | |
| Georgina Andrewes | Behind the Waterfall | £2,000 | |
| James Friel | Left of North | £2,000 | |
| Glenn Patterson | Burning Your Own | £2,00 | |
| Susan Webster | Small Tales of a Town | £2,00 | |
| 1989 | Nigel Watts | The Life Game | £10,000 |
| William Riviere | Watercolour Sky | £5,000 | |
| Paul Houghton | Harry's Last Wedding | £2,000 | |
| Alasdair McKee | Uncle Henry's Last Stand | £2,000 | |
| 1990 | Robert McLiam Wilson | Ripley Bogle | £16,000 |
| Elizabeth Chadwick | The Wild Hunt | £3,000 | |
| Rosemary Cohen | No Strange Land | £3,000 | |
| Nicholas Shakespeare | The Vision of Elena Silves | £3,000 | |
| 1991 | Amit Chaudhuri | A Strange and Sublime Address | £10,000 |
| Mark Swallow | Teaching Little Fang | £7,000 | |
| Suzannah Dunn | Quite Contrary | £2,000 | |
| Lesley Glaister | Honour Thy Father | £2,000 | |
| Nino Ricci | Lives of the Saints | £2,000 | |
| Simon Mason | The Great English Nude | £2,000 | |
| 1992 | Liane Jones | The Dream Stone | £3,000 |
| Peter M. Rosenburg | Kissing Through a Pane of Glass | £5,000 | |
| Tibor Fischer | Under the Frog | £3,000 | |
| Eugene Mullan | The Last of His Line | £3,000 | |
| Edward St Aubyn | Never Mind | £3,000 | |
| 1993 | Mark Blackaby | You’ll Never be Here Again | £10,000 |
| Andrew Cowan | Pig | £7,000 | |
| Simon Corrigan | Tommy Was Here | £5,000 | |
| Joanna Briscoe | Mothers and Other Lovers | £2,000 | |
| Olivia Fane | Landing on Clouds | £2,000 | |
| 1994 | Colin Bateman | Divorcing Jack | £12,000 |
| Nadeem Aslam | Season of the Rainbirds | £10,000 | |
| Guy Burt | After the Hole | £1,000 | |
| Frances Liardet | The Game | £1,000 | |
| Jonathan Rix | Some Hope | £1,000 | |
| 1995 | Robert Newman | Dependence Day | £10,000 |
| Mark Behr | The Smell of Apples | £8,000 | |
| Martina Evans | Midnight Feast | £3,000 | |
| Rohit Manchanda | A Speck of Coaldust | £1,000 | |
| Juliet Thomas | Hallelujah Jordan | £1,000 | |
| Philippa Walshe | The Latecomer | £1,000 | |
| Madeleine Wickham | The Tennis Party | £1,000 | |
| 1996 | John Lanchester | The Debt to Pleasure | £8,000 |
| Meera Syal | Anita and Me | £7,000 | |
| Rhidian Brook | The Testimony of Taliesin Jones | £5,000 | |
| Louis Caron Buss | The Luxury of Exile | £5,000 | |
| 1997 | Alex Garland | The Beach | £12,000 |
| Josie Barnard | Poker Face | £5,000 | |
| Ardashir Vakil | Beach Boy | £5,000 | |
| Diran Adebayo | Some Kind of Black | £1,500 | |
| Sanjida O'Connell | Theory of Mind | £1,500 | |
| 1998 | Kiran Desai | Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard | £10,000 |
| Nick Earls | Zigzag Street | £8,000 | |
| Phil Whitaker | Eclipse of the Sun | £5,000 | |
| Gail Anderson-Dargatz | The Cure for Death by Lighting | £1,000 | |
| Tobias Hill | Underground | £1,000 | |
| 1999 | Elliot Perlman | Three Dollars | £7,000 |
| Catherine Chidgey | In a Fishbone Church | £6,000 | |
| Giles Foden | The Last King of Scotland | £4,000 | |
| Dennis Bock | Olympia | £3,000 | |
| Rajeev Balasubramanyam | In Beautiful Disguises | £2,500 | |
| Sarah Waters | Tipping the Velvet | £1,000 | |
| 2000 | Jonathan Tulloch | The Season Ticket | £10,000 |
| Julia Leigh | The Hunter | £7,000 | |
| Susan Elderkin | Sunset Over Chocolate Mountains | £4,000 | |
| Galaxy Craze | By The Shore | £2,000 | |
| Nicholas Griffin | The Requiem Shark | £2,000 | |
| 2001 | Zadie Smith | White Teeth | £8,000 |
| Justin Hill | The Drink and Dream Teahouse | £5,000 | |
| Maggie O'Farrell | After You'd Gone | £5,000 | |
| Vivien Kelly | Take One Young Man | £4,000 | |
| Mohsin Hamid | Moth Smoke | £2,500 | |
| Patrick Neate | Musungu Jim and the Great Chief Tuloko | £2,500 | |
| 2002 | Hari Kunzru | The Impressionist | £8,000 |
| Rachel Seiffert | The Dark Room | £5,000 | |
| Shamim Sarif | The World Unseen | £4,000 | |
| Helen Cross | My Summer of Love | £2,000 | |
| Chloe Hooper | A Child’s Book of True Crime | £2,000 | |
| Susanna Jones | The Earthquake Bird | £2,000 | |
| Gwendoline Riley | Cold Water | £2,000 | |
| 2003 | Jon McGregor | If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things | £10,000 |
| Sarah Hall | Haweswater | £6,000 | |
| Stephanie Merritt | Gaveston | £4,000 | |
| Elizabeth Garner | Nightdancing | £2,000 | |
| Zoe Strachan | Negative Space | £2,000 | |
| Adam Thirlwell | Politics | £1,000 | |
| 2004 | Louise Dean | Becoming Strangers | £8,000 |
| Hannah MacDonald | The Sun Road | £6,000 | |
| Anthony Cartwright | The Afterglow | £3,000 | |
| Siddharth Dhanvant Sanghvi | The Last Song of Dusk | £3,000 | |
| 2005 | Susan Fletcher | Eve Green | £16,000 |
| Diana Evans | 26a | £2,000 | |
| Helen Walsh | Brass | £2,000 | |
| 2006 | Nick Laird | Utterly Monkey | £10,000 |
| Nicola Monaghan | The Killing Jar | £5,000 | |
| Peter Hobbs | The Short Day Dying | £5,000 | |
| 2007 | Will Davis | My Side of the Story | £10,000 |
| Adam Foulds | The Truth About These Strange Times | £2,500 | |
| Cynan Jones | The Long Dry | £2,500 | |
| Julie Maxwell | You Can Live Forever | £2,500 | |
| Karen Mcleod | In Search of the Missing Eyelash | £2,500 | |
| 2008 | David Szalay | London and the South-East | £10,000 |
| Ross Raisin | God's Own Country | £6,000 | |
| Thomas Leveritt | The Exchange Rate Between Love and Money | £2,000 | |
| Anna Ralph | The Floating Island | £2,000 | |
| 2009 | Samantha Harvey | The Wilderness | £12,000 (Prize) |
| Eleanor Catton | The Rehearsal | £8,000 | |
| 2010 | Nadifa Mohamed | Black Mamba Boy | £10,000 (Prize) |
| Evie Wyld | After the Fire, A Still Small Voice | £7,000 | |
| Jenn Ashworth | A Kind of Intimacy | £1,500 | |
| Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani | I Do Not Come to You by Chance | £1,500 |