Why we chose Benjamin Myers’s Cuddy as the Goldsmiths Prize winner
The time-travelling story about faith, nationhood and the north upends preconceptions of the “historical novel”.
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Goldsmiths Prize 2023
The Goldsmiths Prize for fiction is a literary award established in 2013 in association with the New Statesman. The annual prize of £10,000 is awarded to a book that “breaks the mould or extends the possibilities of the novel form.” Interviews with the 2023 shortlisted authors can be found below and the winner will be announced on 8 November 2023.
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Goldsmiths Prize 2023
Benjamin Myers wins the 2023 Goldsmiths Prize for “virtuosic” novel Cuddy
The award for “mould-breaking” fiction goes to a millennia-spanning epic about St Cuthbert of Lindisfarne.
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Amy Arnold: “We’re unaccustomed to being pushed up against the inner life of another person”
The author of the Goldsmiths Prize-shortlisted Lori & Joe on walking, suspense and capturing consciousness in prose.
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Adam Thirlwell: “Everyone has become a kind of manic everyday literary critic”
The Goldsmiths-shortlisted author on aliens, revolutionary France and our era of misinformation.
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H Gareth Gavin: “I’m more interested in stubbornness than in hope”
The Goldsmiths-shortlisted author of Never Was on transness as “a tussle with history”.
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Kate Briggs: “I took a philosophical vocabulary and offered it to a baby”
The author of the Goldsmiths Prize-shortlisted The Long Form on “patchwork” novels, and why childcare is a political act.
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Benjamin Myers: “Historical fiction is not all tabards and turnips”
The author of the Goldsmiths Prize-shortlisted Cuddy on being a heathen, and why he wants to see a ghost.
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Richard Milward: “I use humour as a coping mechanism”
Polari is the “perfect slang for a freewheeling anarchist”, says the author of the Goldsmiths-shortlisted Man-Eating Typewriter.
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