We are positively thrilled about Harriet Armstrong winning this year’s Betty Trask Prize, awarded on Thursday 18 June by the Society of Authors, at Southwark Cathedral in London.

Prize judge Daisy Lafarge said that ‘Armstrong’s prose has the impressive quality of thought, perception and feeling being worked out on the page in real time: difficult, circuitous, and brightly unexpected.’

Fellow shortlisted authors this year included Gabriel Flynn for Poor Ghost! (Sceptre – Hodder & Stoughton), George Harrison for Season (Lighting, Eye Books), Rowe Irvin for Life Cycle of a Moth (Canongate), Gráinne O’Hare for Thirst Trap (Pan Macmillan, Picador), and Issa Quincy for Absence (Granta).