Our Winner - The 2019 International Beverly Prize for Literature

The 2019 International Beverly Prize for Literature has provided an incredible array of literature for our judge! From poetry that could tighten its achingly cool grip on to your dedicated heart at the stroke of a pen, to thrilling novels that lingered in the background of your day - this year's submissions have truly been inspiring.

As always, it is a bittersweet journey - our favourite pasttime is to read new work from potentially great, soon-to-be legendary writers and yet our most heart-breaking times are making decisions to let go of some of those...

We hope to see each and every piece of work on the shelves.

This year we have chosen to go with a piece of work that we judged to be extraordinarily brilliant - Head Judge Todd Swift had this to say:

'All of the shortlisted works were excellent, and each explored their chosen genres with great facility, charm and often, research. The non-fiction was rich and textured; the prose fiction remarkable. It was nearly impossible to make a selection, but one book stood out, thankfully - and it was the winner.

It is exceptionally difficult to write beautifully, and intelligently, with complexity and yet sincerity, about issues of identity, society, and culture, and still avoid pitfalls - one could say, originality is a challenge, as is the avoidance of appearing to simply preach or admonish; and using form and tradition with dexterity, while never losing sight of the need to speak new voices, new places, new ways of being, is paramount.

This poetry collection was nearly faultless in its imaginative reach, creative flair, and astonishing versatility. Reading it felt like being in the presence of an already-great vision, a writer (in this case) poet who knew precisely the measure of what had to be said, and why, but who never forgot that writing must be moving before it can be persuasive. I believe this collection will be one of the important books of this decade, and am proud to havebeen able to select it.'

This is why our winner of the 2019 International Beverly Prize for Literature is: