Author picks up young writer prize for novel about legacy of male violence

Previous winners of the award, which comes with a £10,000 prize, include Normal People author Sally Rooney and Surge poet Jay Bernard.

Tom Benn has been announced as the the Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer Award for his novel Oxblood. (Beth Moseley Photography)

Tom Benn has been announced as the winner of the Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer Award for Oxblood.

The screenwriter and author – who explores the lives of a great-grandmother, grandmother and a teen mother who live together in a council house in the 1980s amidst the legacy of male violence in his novel – was named as the recipient at Skylight Peckham in London on Tuesday.

Previous winners of the award – which comes with a £10,000 prize – include Normal People author Sally Rooney, Surge poet Jay Bernard and White Teeth novelist Zadie Smith.