Erica Wagner announces Saranya Murthi's novel RATRI as winner of the 2025 Deborah Rogers Award.
- The judges—renowned author and literary critic Erica Wagner (chair), award-winning playwright and poet Inua Ellams, and acclaimed writer, classicist, and broadcaster Natalie Haynes—announce Saranya Murthi as the winner of the 2025 Deborah Rogers Award for her unpublished novel, Ratri.
- The two runners-up were congratulated: June Aming for Yellow Is Not For Girls Like Me (novel) and Piers Kobina Buckman for Ascension (novel).
- Saranya Murthi receives £10,000, and the two shortlisted writers each receive £3,000, bringing the total prize fund to £16,000.
- 876 entries in the form of novels, short stories, non-fiction and young adult writing were considered for the 2025 award which supports an unpublished writer to complete their first book.
- A shortlist of three was chosen from a longlist of eleven submissions.
- Chair of the judges, Erica Wagner, announced the news at a ceremony at Faber on Tuesday, 4 November.
"Saranya Murthi’s Ratri stood out to us from the outset of the process. It is such vivid, specific writing—it’s always challenging to create a truly convincing young voice, but with her eponymous narrator Murthi has nailed it; this extract is so alive, so compelling in its portrait of an awakening consciousness, a child at the mercy of her family and yet alert and self-willed: we can't help but thirst to know how the story will end."
Erica Wagner, Chair of the Judges
The Winner
Saranya Murthi is a 29-year-old writer and audiovisual artist from Kerala, India, currently completing an MA in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. As a musician and video artist, she creates immersive audiovisual experiences blending electronic music with otherworldly visuals, and occasionally, renditions of her own writing. She holds a BA in Contemporary Art Practices from Srishti Manipal Institute, Bangalore and has performed across India.
In her début novel, Saranya introduces us to an unforgettable protagonist:
Vibrant and imaginative 11-year-old Ratri is offered an unexpected opportunity: to act as the possessed child in a local horror film. Can she embody the darkness of this role without it untethering a deep web of repressed trauma?
About the Deborah Rogers Award
Established in 2015 in memory of the esteemed literary agent Deborah Rogers (1938–2014), the Deborah Rogers Award offers financial support to unpublished writers. The award is given biennially (submissions are invited in January, with judging taking place in the autumn) and is open to writers residing in the Commonwealth or Ireland. Previous recipients of the award have been published by Picador, Hamish Hamilton, Bloomsbury, Chatto & Windus, Virago and Jonathan Cape, among others, often going on to secure international deals and further prize recognition. Neil Rollinson received the most recent Award in 2023 for his novel The Dead Don’t Bleed, which will be published by Jonathan Cape in January 2026.
The Deborah Rogers Foundation also supports emerging talent in the literary world through other initiatives, notably The David Miller Internship Programme, which offers entry-level, paid internships to promote diversity in publishing.
Judges of the 2025 Deborah Rogers Award
Erica Wagner (chair): A writer and literary critic, Wagner is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Goldsmiths Distinguished Writers’ Centre Fellow. She has judged numerous literary prizes, including the Man Booker, the Orange Prize, and the Goldsmiths Prize. Her most recent book is Mary and Mr Eliot: A Sort of Love Story.
Inua Ellams: A Nigerian-born British poet, playwright, and curator, Ellams has been honoured with an MBE for Services To The Arts. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Royal Society of Arts. His plays include The 14th Tale, which was awarded a Fringe First, and Barber Shop Chronicles.
Natalie Haynes: The acclaimed writer, broadcaster, classicist, and comedian is described by the Washington Post as a "rock star mythologist." Her retelling of the Trojan War, A Thousand Ships, was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and her novel about the myth of Medea, No Friend to this House, has just been published to great acclaim. She appears regularly on BBC Radio 4, including eleven series of her show, Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics.
Shortlisted Writers – Biographies
June Aming is an award-winning writer from Trinidad and Tobago whose work has appeared in The Caribbean Writer and Voicing Our Vision. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of the West Indies, won the BlackInk Writing Competition in 2023, and is currently working on the female-driven historical novel, Yellow is Not for Girls Like Me.
Piers Kobina Buckman was born in Philadelphia and raised between London and Accra. He was a finalist in the Borough Press BAME Open Submissions Competition in 2019, and a finalist for the Merky Books New Writers’ Prize 2024/25. His novel, Ascension, was inspired by a research project in Ghana.