The University of East Anglia's Creative Writing Course was founded by Sir Malcolm Bradbury and Sir Angus Wilson in 1970. The M.A. is widely regarded as the most prestigious and successful in the country and competition for places is notoriously tough.
Giles Foden is an English author, best known for his novel The Last King of Scotland (1998).
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. Each year the awards total £20,000, with one author receiving a larger prize amount, called the "Prize", and the remainder given to one or more other writers, called the "Awards". The award was established in 1984 by the Society of Authors, at the bequest of the late Betty Trask, a reclusive author of over thirty romance novels. The awards are given to traditional or romantic novels, rather than those of an experimental style, and can be for published or unpublished works.
Amit Chaudhuri is a novelist, poet, essayist, literary critic, editor, singer, and music composer from India.
Dennis Bock is a Canadian novelist and short story writer, lecturer at the University of Toronto, travel writer and book reviewer. His novel Going Home Again was published in Canada by HarperCollins and in the US by Alfred A. Knopf in August 2013. It was shortlisted for the 2013 Scotiabank Giller Prize.
Divorcing Jack is the debut novel and first of the Dan Starkey series by Northern Irish author, Colin Bateman, released on 28 January 1995 through HarperCollins. The novel was recognised as one of the San Francisco Review of Books favourite "First books" of 1995–1996.
Jon McGregor is a British novelist and short story writer. In 2002, his first novel was longlisted for the Booker Prize, making him then the youngest ever contender. His second and fourth novels were longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2006 and 2017 respectively. In 2012, his third novel, Even the Dogs, was awarded the International Dublin Literary Award. The New York Times has labelled him a "wicked British writer".
Maggie O'Farrell, RSL, is a novelist from Northern Ireland. Her acclaimed first novel, After You'd Gone, won the Betty Trask Award, and a later one, The Hand That First Held Mine, the 2010 Costa Novel Award. She has twice been shortlisted since for the Costa Novel Award: for Instructions for a Heatwave in 2014 and This Must Be The Place in 2017. She appeared in the Waterstones 25 Authors for the Future. Her memoir I am, I am, I am: Seventeen Brushes with Death reached the top of the Sunday Times bestseller list. Her novel Hamnet won the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2020, and the fiction prize at the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Awards.
Kate Saunders is an English writer, actress and journalist. She has won the Betty Trask Award and the Costa Children's Book Award and been twice shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal.
Adaobi Tricia Obinne Nwaubani is a Nigerian novelist, humorist, essayist and journalist, who was born in 1976. Her debut novel, I Do Not Come To You By Chance, won the 2010 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book (Africa), a Betty Trask First Book award, and was named by The Washington Post as one of the Best Books of 2009. Her debut Young Adult novel, Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree, based on interviews with girls kidnapped by Boko Haram, was published by HarperCollins in September 2018. It won the 2018 Raven Award for Excellence in Arts and Entertainment, was named as one of the American Library Association’s Best Fiction for Young Adults, and is a Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People 2019 selection.
Andrew Cowan is an English novelist and former director of the creative writing programme at the University of East Anglia.
Susan Elderkin is an English author of two critically acclaimed novels, her first, Sunset Over Chocolate Mountains won a Betty Trask Prize and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, her second, The Voices was shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize and longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. She was one of Granta Magazine's 20 Best Young British Novelists in 2003 and won the 2007 Society of Authors Travel Award. She is the author, with Ella Berthoud, of The Novel Cure: An A-Z of Literary Remedies and The Story Cure: Books to Keep Kids Happy, Healthy and Wise.
Sunset Over Chocolate Mountains is a novel by English author Susan Elderkin published by Fourth Estate. It won a Betty Trask Award in 2000 and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for fiction. The novel has been published in nine countries.
Diana Omo Evans FRSL is a British novelist, journalist and critic who was born and lives in London. Evans has written three full-length novels. Her first novel, 26a, published in 2005, won the Orange Award for New Writers, the Betty Trask Award and the deciBel Writer of the Year award. Her third novel Ordinary People was shortlisted for the 2019 Women's Prize for Fiction and won the 2019 South Bank Sky Arts Award for Literature.
Elnathan John is a Nigerian novelist, satirist and lawyer whose stories have twice been shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing.
Natasha Pulley is a British author. She is best known for her debut novel, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, which won a Betty Trask Award.
After You'd Gone is Northern Irish author Maggie O'Farrell's debut novel. Published in 2000 by Headline Review it garnered 'international acclaim' and won a Betty Trask Award.
Shuggie Bain is the debut novel by Scottish-American writer Douglas Stuart, published in 2020. It tells the story of the youngest of three children, Shuggie, growing up with his alcoholic mother Agnes in 1980s post-industrial working-class Glasgow.
Born on a Tuesday is a 2016 novel by Nigeria writer Elnathan John. It is his debut novel. It was published in 2016 by Black Cat an imprint of Grove Press.
I Do Not Come To You By Chance is a 2009 novel by Nigeria writer Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani. It is her debut novel which was published on May 1, 2009, by Hachette Books, an imprint of Perseus Books Group.
