2021 London Writers Awards Alumna Ashani Lewis took home an astonishing two awards at the Society of Authors awards last month.
Ashani Lewis took part in the London Writers Awards in 2021, developing her novel Winter Animals throughout the programme. She has now won not one, but two Society of Authors’ awards for the novel. Dialogue books have since, “acquired two ‘sharp, seductive’ novels and a short story collection from award-winning writer Ashani Lewis in a six-figure pre-empt” (The Bookseller).
Ashani has been awarded both the £10,000 Betty Trask Prize and the £4,000 Somerset Maugham Award for her novel Winter Animals, published by Dialogue Books. Judge Ellen Wiles described this extraodinary win as “a rare achievement.”
Read all about it in The Bookseller.
Tom Newlands, another alumni from the 2021 London Writers Awards programme, took home the McKitterick Prize at the same awards ceremony.
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The London Writers Awards is our annual writer development programme, designed to launch the careers of writers underrepresented in UK publishing, including those who are Black, Asian and Global Majority, low-income, working-class upbringing, LGBTQIA+, and d/Deaf and disabled. The Awards are free to participate in, bursaries are available for writers on a low-income and there is also an access fund for disabled writers.
Submissions for the 2026 programme will open in September.