The Gordon Burn Prize
The Gordon Burn Prize is now open for entry until 1 August 2026
The Gordon Burn Prize 2027 is open to entry to works in English published between 1 December 2025 and 30 November 2026 by writers of any nationality.
Read the Eligibility and Conditions of Entry and enter the Gordon Burn Prize 2027 here
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.
Founded in 2012 by New Writing North, Faber & Faber and the Gordon Burn Trust, the Gordon Burn Prize has built a reputation for identifying and celebrating brilliant books that often find their readers outside the mainstream.
The 2027 prize will be awarded in March 2027 in Gordon Burn’s home city, Newcastle upon Tyne, with support from Newcastle University and NCLA, the Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts.
The prize remembers the writer Gordon Burn who died in 2009, seeking to celebrate those who follow in his footsteps. A journalist and author of ten books, Burn’s work includes the novels Alma Cogan and Fullalove and non-fiction titles Pocket Money: Inside the World of Snooker and Happy Like Murderers: The Story of Fred and Rosemary West.
Like Gordon Burn’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. 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 2026 was awarded to Maria Reva for Endling on 5 March 2026.
Maria Reva
Winner 2026
Maria Reva was born in Ukraine and grew up in Canada. Her story collection, Good Citizens Need Not Fear, won the Kobzar Book Award and was a finalist for the Writers’ Trust of Canada’s Fiction Prize.
Her writing has been featured in The Atlantic, Granta, The Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere. She also works as an opera librettist.
Endling is her debut novel.
About the prize
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 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.
