# Gordon Burn Prize

The Gordon Burn Prize was launched in 2013 as a vehicle by which "to reward fiction or non-fiction written in the English language, which in the opinion of the judges most successfully represents the spirit and sensibility of [Gordon Burn]'s literary methods: novels which dare to enter history and interrogate the past ... literature which challenges perceived notions of genre and makes us think again about just what it is that we are reading."
The prize is jointly organised by the Gordon Burn Trust, New Writing North and Faber & Faber. The winner receives a prize sum (originally £5,000), and is offered the use of Burn's cottage in Berwickshire as a writers' retreat. Up until 2024, the prize ceremony was generally the first event of the Durham Book Festival. In 2024, the prize fund was doubled to £10,000 due to new sponsors and the award ceremony relocated to Newcastle upon Tyne.

## Winners and shortlists

| Year | Author | Title | Publisher |
| 2013 | Ben Myers | Pig Iron | Bluemoose Books |
| 2013 | Anthony Cartwright | How I Killed Margaret Thatcher | Tindal Street Press |
| 2013 | Duncan Hamilton | The Footballer Who Could Fly | Century |
| 2013 | Richard Lloyd Parry | People Who Eat Darkness | Jonathan Cape |
| 2013 | Jean Rafferty | Myra, Beyond Saddleworth | Wild Wolf Publishing |
| 2014 | Paul Kingsnorth | The Wake | Unbound |
| 2014 | Richard Benson | The Valley | Bloomsbury |
| 2014 | Richard House | The Kills | Picador |
| 2014 | Olivia Laing | The Trip to Echo Spring | Canongate |
| 2014 | Gruff Rhys | American Interior | Hamish Hamilton |
| 2014 | Willy Vlautin | The Free | Faber and Faber |
| 2015 | Dan Davies | In Plain Sight: The Life and Lies of Jimmy Savile | Quercus |
| 2015 | Honor Gavin | Midland | Penned in the Margins |
| 2015 | Romesh Gunesekera | Noon Tide Toll | Granta Books |
| 2015 | Richard King | Original Rockers | Faber and Faber |
| 2015 | Peter Pomerantsev | Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible | PublicAffairs |
| 2016 | David Szalay | All That Man Is | Jonathan Cape |
| 2016 | Jeremy Gavron | A Woman on the Edge of Time: A Son's Search for his Mother | Scribe |
| 2016 | Olivia Laing | The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone | Picador |
| 2016 | Ottessa Moshfegh | Eileen | Penguin Press |
| 2016 | Harry Parker | Anatomy of a Soldier | Faber and Faber |
| 2016 | Adrian Tempany | And the Sun Shines Now | Faber and Faber |
| 2017 | Denise Mina | The Long Drop | Harvill Secker |
| 2017 | Kapka Kassabova | Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe | Granta Books |
| 2017 | David Keenan | This Is Memorial Device | Faber and Faber |
| 2017 | Lara Pawson | This Is the Place to Be | CB Editions |
| 2017 | Gwendoline Riley | First Love | Granta Books |
| 2017 | Adelle Stripe | Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile | Wrecking Ball Press |
| 2018 | Jesse Ball | Census | Granta Books |
| 2018 | Nicola Barker | H(a)ppy | William Heinemann |
| 2018 | Guy Gunaratne | In Our Mad and Furious City | Tinder Press |
| 2018 | Olivia Laing | Crudo | Picador |
| 2018 | Deborah Levy | The Cost of Living | Hamish Hamilton |
| 2018 | Michelle McNamara | I'll Be Gone in the Dark | Faber and Faber |
| 2019 | David Keenan | For the Good Times | Faber and Faber |
| 2019 | Pat Barker | The Silence of the Girls | Penguin |
| 2019 | Bernardine Evaristo | Girl, Woman, Other | Hamish Hamilton |
| 2019 | Niven Govinden | This Brutal House | Dialogue Books |
| 2019 | Max Porter | Lanny | Faber and Faber |
| 2019 | Nafissa Thompson-Spires | Heads of the Colored People | Chatto & Windus |
| 2020 | Peter Pomerantsev | This Is Not Propaganda | Faber and Faber |
| 2020 | Jenn Ashworth | Notes Made While Falling | Goldsmiths Press |
| 2020 | Paul Mendez | Rainbow Milk | Dialogue Books |
| 2020 | Deborah Orr | Motherwell: A Girlhood | Weidenfeld & Nicolson |
| 2020 | Lemn Sissay | My Name Is Why | Canongate |
| 2020 | Lisa Taddeo | Three Women | Bloomsbury |
| 2021 | Hanif Abdurraqib | A Little Devil in America | Allen Lane |
| 2021 | Sam Byers | Come Join Our Disease | Faber and Faber |
| 2021 | Jenni Fagan | Luckenbooth | William Heinemann |
| 2021 | Salena Godden | Mrs Death Misses Death | Canongate |
| 2021 | Tabitha Lasley | Sea State | HarperCollins |
| 2021 | Doireann Ní Ghríofa | A Ghost in the Throat | Tramp Press |
| 2022 | Preti Taneja | Aftermath | And Other Stories |
| 2022 | Graeme Macrae Burnet | Case Study | Saraband |
| 2022 | Margo Jefferson | Constructing a Nervous System | Granta Books |
| 2022 | David Whitehouse | About a Son | Phoenix Press |
| 2022 | Lea Ypi | Free: Coming of Age at the End of History | Allen Lane |
| 2023 / 2024 | Kathryn Scanlan | Kick the Latch | Daunt Originals |
| 2023 / 2024 | Rory Carroll | Killing Thatcher | Mudlark |
| 2023 / 2024 | Jonathan Escoffery | If I Survive You | 4th Estate |
| 2023 / 2024 | Anna Funder | Wifedom: Mrs Orwell's Invisible Life | Viking Press |
| 2023 / 2024 | John Niven | O Brother | Canongate |
| 2023 / 2024 | Megan Nolan | Ordinary Human Failings | Jonathan Cape |
| 2023 / 2024 | Tanya Tagaq | Split Tooth | And Other Stories |
| 2025 | Jenni Fagan | Ootlin | Hutchinson Heinemann |
| 2025 | Rita Bullwinkel | Headshot | Daunt Books |
| 2025 | Emma Glass | Mrs Jekyll | Cheerio |
| 2025 | Gabrielle de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad | Poor Artists | Particular Books |
| 2025 | Tom Newlands | Only Here, Only Now | Phoenix |