Northern writers still face a struggle to make it in the London-centric literary world, the organisers of a regional literary prize have said.
Claire Malcolm, founder and chief executive of New Writing North, which runs the Northern Writers’ Awards, said: “It still doesn’t feel like a level playing field for the north. That is the continual thing we are trying to make the case for: talent here is still struggling to make connections, it needs investment.” The Northern Writers’ Awards, which will announce their 25th annual winners on Tuesday, was established in the late 1990s to discover and support new writing talent in the north of England, tackling disadvantages faced by writers who felt shut out by the publishing industry.
It has supported more than 400 northern writers with cash prizes, handing out £50,000 a year, and networking. Unlike most literary prizes, the awards support writers who have no agent representation and have not previously been published.
Success stories include Benjamin Myers, author of The Gallows Pole, which was adapted by Shane Meadows for BBC TV in 2023. Myers won a Northern Writers’ Award in 2013 for his novel Beastings, winning money and support to develop his work, leading to further awards and a publishing deal with Bloomsbury.
Despite his success, Malcolm recalled one literary editor saying Myers was “very northern and there probably wasn’t a market for that”. She said prejudices such as these are why the awards are still so important.
Andrew McMillan also won a Northern Writers’ Award in 2013 for his poetry, and his first collection, physical, went on to win the Guardian first book award. His first novel, Pity, was published earlier this year. On Tuesday he will announce the winner of a new prize, The Tempest prize, which he has established with New Writing North to find unpublished LGBTQ+ writers in the region.
“I liked the idea of finding stories that might come from places like Barnsley [where McMillan grew up], and other towns and villages in the north of England, where there are stories but we just haven’t heard them yet,” McMillan says. “The level of entries was remarkably high.”
The winner of the Tempest prize will receive mentoring with McMillan and support from New Writing North. “The writing world can seem really opaque,” says McMillan. “For writers who don’t have that access, it’s helpful to demystify it.”
Malcolm said the Conservative party’s Levelling Up agenda “has not levelled up culture at all … It’s been frustrating that money has not followed ambition.”
She added: “What the north needs are much bigger levers to make talent happen and to sustain a culture where you might not have to leave the north-east to work in publishing, because that industry will be here.”
