Anna Dempsey has been named the winner of the inaugural Hilary Mantel prize for fiction, taking home £7,500 for her unpublished novel This Is About an Alligator and Nothing Else. The prize, launched to honour the legacy of the late Booker prize-winning novelist, aims to support unpublished and un-agented writers across the UK and Ireland.
Dempsey, a Florida-born writer and teacher now living in London, was selected from 2,300 submissions. Uduak-Abasi Ekong, a Manchester-based Nigerian writer, was named runner-up for her novel A Kind of Resurrection, receiving £2,500. Both writers will receive mentoring from an agent at AM Heath and an editor at John Murray, with Dempsey also awarded a place on an Arvon Foundation residential writing course.
Dempsey's winning novel is a coming-of-age story set on the edge of the Florida Everglades, where a small town faces a water contamination crisis linked to corporate negligence. After her father's sudden death, officially ruled a heart attack, the young protagonist becomes convinced the company is responsible. Dempsey began writing the book shortly after her father's sudden death in 2020.
Ekong's novel is a work of psychological horror drawing on West African folklore, intertwining supernatural elements with emotional trauma. The judging panel was chaired by bestselling author Maggie O'Farrell and included Mantel's longtime editor Nicholas Pearson, actor Ben Miles, and novelists Chetna Maroo and Chigozie Obioma.
Bill Hamilton, Mantel's agent, praised the breadth of submissions, noting 'the closer we got to a manageable number to recommend to the judges, the bigger the contrasts in the imagination and style and voices of the writers'. The prize is open biennially to unpublished and un-agented writers in the UK and Ireland, who submit an extract of 15,000 words.
