Previous Winners

On 24th June 2009, Edward Hogan was named the winner of the £10,000 Desmond Elliott Prize for Blackmoor, published by Simon & Schuster.

Edward Hogan was born in Derby in 1980. He is a graduate of the MA in creative writing course at the University of East Anglia and a recipient of the David Higham Award in 2003. Blackmoor was on the shortlist for the 2008 Dylan Thomas Prize. He was shortlisted for the 2009 Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. He lives in Brighton.

'There's a subtle magic to Hogan's prose, and a passionate concern for the part of the world where this novel is based, which invites comparison with D H Lawrence – but that would be lazy. This novel … has confidence, mystery and an entrancing sense of itself.’ The Independent on Sunday

The inaugural Desmond Elliott Prize was awarded on the 26th June 2008 to Nikita Lalwani for Gifted, a story about a maths prodigy growing up in 1980s Cardiff, published by Penguin Books.

Nikita Lalwani was born in Kota, Rajasthan in 1973 and raised in Cardiff. Gifted is her first novel and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2007 and shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award 2007and the Glen Dimplex Fiction Award 2007.

Gifted was written in 18 months and Nikita received responses from potential agents within two days of looking.  The Bookseller cited the book as “one of the most coveted British fiction debuts of the year”. Nikita lives in London with her husband and child.

Click here for more info about the 2008 prize.