Author Louise Kennedy has won The McKitterick Prize at the Society of Authors' Awards for her novel Trespasses.
The Society of Authors' Awards offers the UK’s largest literary prize fund, sharing £100,000 between novelists, poets, short story writers and children’s authors.
The McKitterick Prize is awarded for a first novel by a writer over 40.
Set in 1970s Belfast, where a young Catholic woman falls for an older Protestant man, Trespasses has already has already won the An Post Irish Book of the Year award, and The Bookseller magazine's Book of the Year prize.
Louise Kennedy grew up near Belfast. Trespasses is her debut novel. She is also the author of a collection of short stories, The End of the World Is a Cul de Sac.
Before becoming a writer, she worked as a chef for almost thirty years. She currently lives in Sligo.
The SAA winners were celebrated at a party at Southwark Cathedral, hosted by author Joanne Harris with a keynote from Val McDermid.
Prizes also went to Nicola Griffith’s Spear, winning the inaugural ADCI Literary Prize, launched last year to encourage greater positive representation of disability in literature, and poet Jay Gao who wins both an Eric Gregory Award and a Somerset Maugham Award for his debut collection Imperium.
Find out more about the Society of Authors' Awards here.
