New sponsor, bigger prize fund and new chair of judges for the Gordon Burn Prize
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Terri White has been announced as the new chair of the judges for the Gordon Burn Prize, which will next be announced in March 2024. Terri White is a journalist, screenwriter and author of the 2020 memoir Coming Undone.
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. Today’s announcement heralds a new three-year partnership with Newcastle University. The Gordon Burn Prize 2023-24 will be announced at Newcastle’s Northern Stage in March 2024, with an accompanying programme of activities for university staff and students. The new sponsorship from Newcastle University also means the prize fund has doubled to £10,000.
About the prize
The Gordon Burn Prize remembers the 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 prize seeks to celebrate the writing of those whose work follows in Gordon’s footsteps, 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 and challenging readers’ expectations. In 2022, Preti Taneja won the Gordon Burn Prize for Aftermath, a work of narrative non-fiction that blurs genres and form to understand terror, trauma and grief.
Gordon was born in 1948 in the West End of Newcastle and retained a strong connection to the city throughout his life, writing about the city in both journalism and his novel, The North of England Home Service. While based in London, in later years he did much of his writing in a small cottage in rural Berwickshire, bought for that purpose. As well as winning £10,000, the winner of the Gordon Burn Prize will have the opportunity to take up a writing retreat at Gordon’s cottage.
Entry information
The Gordon Burn Prize 2023-24 will open for entry in May 2023 to works in English published between 1 July 2022 and 30 November 2023 by writers of any nationality. The longlist will be announced in November 2023 and the shortlist in January 2024, before the prize ceremony in March 2024.