British-Jamaican poet Raymond Antrobus has been named winner of the 2019 Sunday Times/University of Warwick Young Writer of the Year Award for his critically acclaimed, multi-award-winning debut The Perseverance.

The award marks an unprecedented year of honours for the 33-year old writer from Hackney, east London. The Perseverance, published by the small press Penned in the Margins, has already won the Ted Hughes Prize, the Rathbones Folio Prize, and the Somerset Maugham Award, and was shortlisted for numerous others.

Ranging across history and continents, the collection explores issues as wide-ranging as the poet ’s diagnosis with deafness as a child, mixed heritage experience, masculinity, and his father’s alcoholism and later decline into dementia.

Judge Kate Clanchy said:

“The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award is special because it looks to the future: we wanted to find a writer who both speaks for now and who we were confident would continue to produce valuable, central work. Raymond Antrobus’ s The Perseverance draws together the worlds of performance and page poetry and speaks for his Jamaican British heritage and his d/Deaf communities in a way that is completely contemporary; but it was the humanity of the book, its tempered kindness, and its commitment not just to recognising difference but to the difficult act of forgiveness that made us confident we had found a winner for this extraordinary year.”

Judge Victoria Hislop said: “Raymond Antrobus takes us into a world unknown to most of us… a silent world where words have new meanings and often greater weight. He writes in a very personal way and one which really affects an open-hearted reader and I am excited about what he will write in the future.”

Andrew Holgate, Literary Editor of The Sunday Times, said: “What’s most impressive about Raymond’s book is the way he so subtly weaves his disparate themes together – about deafness, his Anglo-Carribean heritage, his relationship with his father - into a collection that is both very personal and immensely resonant. The result is a memoir in verse very, very affecting and fresh.”

Raymond Antrobus joins Sarah Howe, Max Porter, Sally Rooney and Adam Weymouth as the fifth writer in an exceptional line-up of defining new voices spotted and supported by the Young Writer of the Year Award since it returned from a 7-year break in 2015. With an alumni list since the award began 29 years ago that includes everyone from Robert Macfarlane to Zadie Smith, from Sarah Waters to Simon Armitage, the award – for the best work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry by a British or Irish author aged between 18 and 35 – is an unrivalled spotter of future literary greats at the beginning of their careers.

Antrobus was born in Hackney to an English mother and Jamaican father. They lived separately, but poetry had a presence in both households. As a child Antrobus was wrongly thought to have learning difficulties until, at the age of six, his deafness was discovered. He worked in different jobs – removals, gyms, swimming pools, security – before becoming a teacher.

As an emerging writing, he found early mentorship from poets such as Malika Booker, Jacob Sam-La Rose, and Roger Robinson, who were creating a vital mentoring network for underrepresented poets at the time, and has since received fellowships from Cave Canem, Complete Works III and Jerwood Compton Poetry. He is one of the world’s first recipients of an MA in Spoken Word Education from Goldsmiths, University of London, and went on to become a founding member of the spoken word showcase Chill Pill and the Keats House Poets Forum.

Antrobus has had multiple residencies in deaf and hearing schools around London. He used some of the winning money from the Rathbones Folio Prize (he was the first ever poet to win the £30,000 prize) to mentor a group of deaf children at his old school, Blanche Nevile School for Deaf Children, and for groups of students from both Blanche Nevile and Oak Lodge Deaf School, where his former headteacher now works, to go on poetry, theatre and literature trips throughout the year.

The judges have chosen Antrobus from a shortlist that also contained The White Review Short Story Prize winner Julia Armfield, British-Brazilian novelist Yara Rodrigues Fowler, and writer and Creative Writing teacher Kim Sherwood. Publishers submitted in record numbers this year – prompting The Sunday Times Literary Editor Andrew Holgate, to sign up two further judges: the writer, editor and bookseller Nick Rennison and the University of Warwick’s Gonzalo C. Garcia, who joined the award-winning poet and writer Kate Clanchy and the best-selling author Victoria Hislop.

This is the first year the University of Warwick – home to the acclaimed Warwick Writing Programme – acts as the title sponsor of the prize, following two years as its associate partner.

The winner package includes a bespoke 10-week residency at the University of Warwick, in addition to £5,000 in prize money. New in 2019 is a year’s membership of The London Library, which will be given to the winner, as well as the three shortlisted writers.

Administered by the Society of Authors, the Young Writer of the Year Award works with a growing network of partners, including the British Council, to provide a critical support system to the very best talent at work right now.

Past winners are: Adam Weymouth, Kings of the Yukon (2018); Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends (2017); Max Porter, Grief is the Thing with Feathers (2016); Sarah Howe, Loop of Jade (2015); Ross Raisin, God’s Own Country (2009); Adam Foulds, The Truth About These Strange Times (2008); Naomi Alderman, Disobedience (2007), Robert Macfarlane, Mountains of the Mind: a History of a Fascination (2004); William Fiennes, The Snow Geese (2003); Zadie Smith, White Teeth (2001); Sarah Waters, Affinity (2000); Paul Farley, The Boy from the Chemist is Here to See You (1999); Patrick French, Liberty or Death: India’s Journey to Independence and Division (1998); Francis Spufford, I May Be Some Time: Ice and the English Imagination (1997); Katherine Pierpoint, Truffle Beds (1996); Andrew Cowan, Pig (1995); William Dalrymple, City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi (1994); Simon Armitage, Kid (1993); Caryl Phillips, Cambridge (1992); and Helen Simpson, Four Bare Legs in a Bed and Other Stories (1991).

6 December 2019

Notes:

• The Sunday Times / University of Warwick Young Writer of the Year Award:

Founded in 1991, the award recognises the best literary work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry by a British or Irish writer of 35 and under. £5,000 is given to the winner, and £500 to each of the three runners-up. The award was suspended in 2008, but was revitalised in 2015, building on the remarkable legacy of the prize by introducing two significant and exciting innovations: extending its reach by including writers from Ireland and including self-published works as well as those from publishers – putting the prize in tune with the changing landscape of British publishing. In 2019, after two years as associate sponsor, the University of Warwick assumed the title partnership of the prize.

• The Sunday Times:

The Sunday Times, founded in 1822, is Britain’s best-selling quality newspaper. It celebrated its 10,000th edition in May 2016 and has won a clutch of awards for its Insight team investigations unit, its foreign reporting and its magazine features and interviews, in particular. At the 2019 Press Awards The Sunday Times won Sunday Newspaper of the Year, the political editor Tim Shipman was named both the Political Reporter of the Year and Political Commentator of the Year, and Decca Aitkenhead was selected as Interviewer of the Year.

• The University of Warwick:

The University of Warwick offers a bespoke 10-week residency for the winner and a year round programme of digital support for the prize. The University of Warwick is consistently ranked in the top 10 universities in the UK and top 100 in the world, with the Warwick Writing Programme ranked No1 in the UK by The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2018. It is one of the UK’s leading universities, with an acknowledged reputation for excellence in research, teaching and innovation alongside pioneering links with business and industry. It is home to the acclaimed Warwick Writing Programme, the largest and most comprehensive of its kind in Europe, which is currently home to renowned authors such as: Will Eaves, Maureen Freely, Michael Hulse, Gonzalo Ceron Garcia, A.L. Kennedy, Tim Leach, David Morley, Sarah Moss, Jonathan Skinner, and David Vann.

• The British Council:

The British Council is the UK’s international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities. We work with over 100 countries in the fields of arts and culture, English language, education and civil society. Last year we reached over 80 million people directly and 791 million people overall including online, broadcasts and publications. We make a positive contribution to the countries we work with – changing lives by creating opportunities, building connections and engendering trust. Founded in 1934 we are a UK charity governed by Royal Charter and a UK public body. We receive a 15 per cent core funding grant from the UK government.

• The Society of Authors:

The Society of Authors is the UK trade union for all types of writers, illustrators and literary translators, at all stages of their careers. They have more than 10,000 members and have been advising individuals and speaking out for the profession for more than a century. In 2019, they will award more than £600,000 in grants and prizes (for fiction, non-fiction, poetry and translation). In all the Society of Authors administers twentytwo prizes, including The Sunday Times / University of Warwick Young Writer of the Year Award.

Contact:

Tom Frew, Senior Press and Media Relations Manager – University of Warwick:

E: a.t.frew@warwick.ac.uk
M: +44(0)7785433155