2023 Writers Award Applications OPEN
Writers Award submissions are now open. Please visist the WRITERS AWARD PAGE for more informationand to make your application.
• Submissions open on 1st January and close on 31st March 2023
• Judges will be Abdulrazak Gurnah, Claire Adam and Annalena McAfee
• Winner receives £10,000 to complete first book
The judges of the 2023 DRF Writers Award will be Abdulrazak Gurnah (Chair), Claire Adam and Annalena McAfee. They will announce the shortlist of three in October 2023 and the Award will be presented in London later that month.
The winner of the 2022 Writers Award was Mathelinda Nabugodi for The Trembling Hand, a work of non-fiction to be published by Hamish Hamilton in the UK and Knopf in the US in 2024.
News
We are pleased to provide this report on the successful completion of the David Miller Internship Programme (DMIP) by Phoebe Turner and Margo Ivanova. As always, your collective commitment was instrumental in achieving the programme's objectives.
'Our summer newsletter is full of introductions - to the talented writers who have generously agreed to give up their time to judge the 2027 Deborah Rogers Award, and to the two young people who have won a place in this autumn's David Miller Internship Programme.' Gill Coleridge, Founder of the DRF
Bernardine Evaristo chairs a panel of three judges. Two past winners celebrate publication in 2027.
Neil Rollinson’s The Dead Don’t Bleed, winner of the 2025 Deborah Rogers Award is published by Jonathan Cape to great acclaim
Mathelinda Nabugodi’s book of essays, The Trembling Hand: Reflections of a Black Woman in the Romantic Archive, is published by Hamish Hamilton. The Trembling Hand was winner of the 2021 Deborah Rogers Award.
"We started the year celebrating an exciting publishing deal for Deborah Rogers
Award winner, Saranya Murthi, and the news that both the David Miller
Internship...
The DRF David Miller Internship Programme returns in a new partnership with New Writing North. Two paid internships providing an entry level insight into rights and agenting in publishing.
Erica Wagner announces Saranya Murthi's novel RATRI as winner of the 2025 Deborah Rogers Award. June Aming and Piers Kobina Buckman were shortlisted for their novels. The winner receives £10k and the two shortlisted writers, £3k each.
The judges of the 2025 Deborah Rogers Award—renowned author and literary critic Erica Wagner (chair), award-winning playwright and poet Inua Ellams, and acclaimed writer, classicist, and broadcaster Natalie Haynes —are pleased to announce the three contenders for this year's prize.
The Deborah Rogers Foundation (DRF) marks a decade of supporting emerging literary talent with a refreshed identity for its flagship prize, now renamed the Deborah Rogers Award.