The Gordon Burn Prize

The Gordon Burn Prize recognises literature that is forward-thinking and fearless in its ambition and execution, often playing with style, pushing boundaries, crossing genres or challenging readers’ expectations.

Like Gordon’s own work, the prize is open to a diverse range of themes and perspectives drawn from the breadth of today’s cultural and social concerns. It welcomes books by writers emerging from backgrounds underrepresented in the mainstream literary culture.

The judges seek work that shows an affinity with the spirit and sensibility of Gordon’s literary methods: novels which dare to enter history and interrogate the past; writers of non-fiction brave enough to recast characters and historical events to create a new and vivid reality.

The Gordon Burn Prize was launched by New Writing North, Faber & Faber and the Gordon Burn Trust in 2012 and first awarded in 2013 to Benjamin Myers. For ten years, the prize was awarded as part of Durham Book Festival. From 2023, the prize is sponsored by Newcastle University. The Gordon Burn Prize 2023-24 will be announced at Newcastle’s Northern Stage in March 2024. The new sponsorship from Newcastle University also means the prize fund has doubled to £10,000.

The Gordon Burn Prize is open to published fiction and non-fiction books written in the English language. The winning writer receives £10,000 and is offered the opportunity to undertake a writing retreat of up to three months at Gordon Burn’s cottage in Berwickshire in the Scottish Borders.