Judges announced for Gordon Burn Prize 2022

Prize opens for entries until Tuesday 5 April 2022

The sportswriter and columnist Jonathan Liew, broadcaster Stuart Maconie, artist Heather Phillipson and writer Chitra Ramaswamy will join chair of the judges, novelist Denise Mina, to judge the Gordon Burn Prize 2022. The prize is now open for entries until Tuesday 5 April 2022.

The Gordon Burn Prize celebrates its tenth anniversary in 2022. It was launched in 2012 and first awarded in 2013 to remember the Newcastle-born author of novels including Alma Cogan, Fullalove and Born Yesterday: The News as a Novel, and non-fiction including Happy Like Murderers: The Story of Fred and Rosemary West and Best and Edwards: Football, Fame and Oblivion. The Gordon Burn Prize seeks to celebrate the writing of those whose work follows in his footsteps.

The Gordon Burn Prize is run in partnership by the Gordon Burn Trust, New Writing North, Faber & Faber and Durham Book Festival – a key part of County Durham’s rich cultural offer and its bid to be UK City of Culture 2025. The prize is announced each October at Durham Book Festival, a Durham County Council event produced by New Writing North.

Over the past decade, the prize has grown a reputation for identifying and celebrating brilliant writing that often finds its readers outside the mainstream. The prize covers both fiction and non-fiction, awarding books that are fearless in their ambition and execution, often pushing boundaries, crossing genres or challenging readers’ expectations.

Hanif Abdurraqib won the Gordon Burn Prize in 2021 for his book A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance. The essay collection is a meditation on Black performance in the modern age that reaches back through the lives of musicians, cultural figures, history and his own personal story of love and grief. Sian Cain, one of the Gordon Burn Prize 2021 judges, said of the winning title: ‘A Little Devil in America is as uplifting, devastating, informative and profound a work of non-fiction as I can remember reading. If a group of readers was looking for a graceful word on Blackness, on music, on comedy, on dance, on performance, on maleness, on joy, on despair, on beauty, they could all be handed a copy of Abdurraqib’s book and find it.’

Previous winners of the Gordon Burn Prize:

• Hanif Abdurraqib, A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance (2021)
• Peter Pomerantsev, This Is Not Propaganda (2020)
• David Keenan, For The Good Times (2019)
• Jesse Ball, Census (2018)
• Denise Mina, The Long Drop (2017)
• David Szalay, All That Man Is (2016)
• Dan Davies, In Plain Sight: The Life and Lies of Jimmy Savile (2015)
• Paul Kingsnorth, The Wake (2014)
• Benjamin Myers, Pig Iron (2013)

The Gordon Burn Prize is now open for entries of published books written in the English language. The winning writer will receive £5,000 and the opportunity to undertake a writing retreat of up to three months at Gordon Burn’s cottage in the Scottish borders.

Enter by 5 April 2022 at The Prize – Gordon Burn Prize