Get inspired

• Gail Honeyman (2014 shortlist) has topped the fiction charts with her novel Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine (published in 2017) a deft observation of everyday life. The novel is now being adapted as a film for direct MGM and Hello Sunshine.
• Catherine Chanter (2013 winner) became a published author with her feminist, post-apocalyptic The Well which has now been published in the UK by Canongate and translated into twelve languages. Catherine has since published The Half Sister, and A Child in the Middle was published (2022 by Linen Press).
• Frances Maynard (2016 shortlist) published The Seven Imperfect Rules of Elvira Carr, a funny, heart-warming and award-winning piece of fiction. She went on to publish Maggsie McNaughton’s Second Chance in 2019.
• Emily Midorikawa (2015 winner) and Emma Claire Sweeney published A Secret Sisterhood to wide acclaim.
• Lesley Sanderson published her gripping thriller The Orchid Girls (2017 shortlist) in 2018 and has since published The Woman at 46 Heath Street and The Leaving Party.
• Sara Collins’ debut, The Confessions of Frannie Langton, (2016 shortlist) a gothic romance, was published in 2019 in the UK and US. It won the 2019 Costa First Novel Award, has been sold for translation into more than fourteen languages, and has been optioned for television.
• Laura Marshall’s psychological thriller Friend Request (2016 shortlist) was published in 2017 and has gone on to receive numerous awards. Laura has since published another acclaimed crime thriller, Three Little Lies, The Anniversary, and My Husband's Killer.
• Claire Askew published her crime debut All the Hidden Truths (2016 winner) and has now also written and published What You Pay For.
• Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott’s dazzling debut Swan Song (2016 shortlist) was published by Penguin Random House/Hutchinson in 2018 and among many accolades was longlisted for the Women's Prize For Fiction in 2019. The rights have been sold for television to Balloon Entertainment (Skins, Clique), with Kelleigh adapting the novel as a limited series.
• Victoria McKenzie's Brantwood (shortlisted 2017) will be published as part of a two-book deal with Bloomsbury, including her novel For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain.
• Nicola Garrard's 29 Locks (shortlisted 2019) a gritty coming-of-age novel that tells the story of 15-year-old Donny, an ex-gang member from Hackney, has been published by HopeRoad in September 2021.
• Sarah Marsh's (2019 shortlist) first novel, A Sign of Her Own, published by Tinder Press in February 2024.
• Also shortlisted in 2019, Carly Reagon's The Toll House was published in October 2022 by Little, Brown Book Group.
• Sarah Brooks's novel (winner 2019) The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands was signed by W&N in an 11-way auction as part of a deal for two books. The novel will published by W&N in summer 2024, and rights have been sold in 10 territories worldwide.
• Emma Hughes's first novel No Such Thing as Perfect (shortlisted 2019) was published by Century in August 2021, and her second novel It’s Complicated came out in summer 2023.
• Laure Van Rensburg's debut novel (shortlist 2020) Nobody but Us was published by Michael Joseph in 2022 and was shortlisted for the 2019 First Novel Prize. Her second novel, The Good Daughter was published in August 2023.
• Susan Stokes Chapman’s Pandora (shortlisted 2020) was published by Harvill Secker in 2022, becoming a #1 Sunday Times Bestseller immediately upon publication and rights have sold in 15 territories worldwide. Harvill Secker will also publish Susan's second novel The Shadow Key in 2024, The Twelve Days of Christmas in autumn 2025, The Constellations in spring 2026 and The Moth Farm in spring 2028.
• Also shortlisted in 2020, Bibi Berki's The Watch was published in September 2021 by Salt Publishing.
• Alison Stockham's The Cuckoo Sister (2020 longlist) was published by Boldwood Books in February 2023.
• Virago has published Aoife Fitzpatrick's The Red Bird Sings, a feminist historical gothic debut which won the Lucy Cavendish Prize in 2020 (as An Arrangement in Grey and Black), and acquired a second novel.
• Megan Davis' debut novel The Messenger (2021 winner) was published in March by Zaffre.
• 2023 winner, Sarah Harman's debut novel All The Other Mothers Hate Me will be published in Spring 2025 by 4th Estate Books in the UK after a nine-way British auction, and by Putnam in the US, it was sold into other eleven territories and adapted for tv by FX.
• The Surfacing by Clare Ackroyd (shortlisted 2022) will be published by Amazon Publishing in July 2025.

Get inspired with blogs by published writers, previous winners and shortlisted authors

Listen to the 2023 winner and shortlisted authors read an extract from their novel below.

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