2024 Winner & Listees

The Bath Novel Awards are international prizes for unagented emerging writers. Recipients include Abi Daré for the manuscript of The Girl with the Louding Voice, Kim Sherwood for Testament and AP Firdaus for Remember, Mr Sharma.

The Bath Novel Award is a £5,000 prize for adult and YA manuscripts and we are delighted to announce 2024’s winner and listees.

This year’s prize attracted a record number of submissions from writers in 78 countries. A 21-strong longlist was announced in June, followed by a shortlist of four in July. Our heartfelt thanks to Catherine Cho for her wisdom, care and consideration in judging this year’s winning novel.

Bath Novel Award 2024 WINNER | Prize: £5,000
BEN REEVES for Dance of the Mayflies
Literary | Unpublished

“Dance of the Mayflies is a kaleidoscope of a novel that’s set in modern-day, the central character Death has taken human form. We see him visit people in their final moments, woven within the story is his relationship with a midwife and her young daughters. The prose is stunning, and it has ambitious scope, but it also feels incredibly intimate and heartfelt.” – Catherine Cho

BEN REEVES is a computer programmer for a book printing company, and a father of two children. With every novel he writes, Ben aims to explore the extreme highs and lows of being human. He writes about the subjects closest to his heart, and ‘death’ is a theme that’s fascinated him his entire life. In Dance of the Mayflies, Death is personified as a down-to-earth man named Travis Smith, living in a flat in England – a man endlessly enchanted by the world around him. Ben has been shortlisted for the Jericho Writers Best Opening Chapter, Best 500 words and Best Pitch.

Bath Novel Award 2024 Shortlisted:
JESS WORSDALE for Lagan & Derelict
Dystopian | Unpublished

“A very imaginative and a new take on dystopia, it felt very fully realized, and I completely believed this portrait of Dublin. The dialogue was spot-on, and I found myself horrified by ‘skimming’ and the darkness of this world.” – Catherine Cho

JESS WORSDALE grew up in the New Forest, spent her twenties in Dublin and now lives in Belfast. She studied Chinese at university before fiction took over, and writes in the corners of time around her job at a charity. In 2022 she undertook an MA in Creative Writing at UEA, where she wrote the first draft of Lagan & Derelict – literary speculative fiction set in near-future Dublin, for fans of Emily St. John Mandel, Jessie Greengrass and the TV series Severance. The novel asks: are emotions what make us human, and how far can happiness be a choice?

Lagan & Derelict listed for the 2024 Discoveries Prize, was a finalist in the 2023 Mslexia Novel Competition, and was awarded mentoring support from Arts Council NI and the Irish Writers’ Centre. Away from the desk, Jess enjoys long-distance hiking and wild camping. She is happiest halfway up a hill, eating dehydrated meals in the rain and embracing the type-two fun.

Bath Novel Award 2024 Shortlisted:
ELISA OH for A View of the Open Sky
Historical | Unpublished

“The skill of the letters in capturing the voices of the characters, the humor (I laughed out line many times) was wonderful, and I admired the rich tapestry of this world.” – Catherine Cho

ELISA OH holds degrees in English literature from Smith College, the University of Virginia, and Boston University, and she is an Associate Professor in Howard University’s English Department in Washington, DC.  Years ago she sent a fictional letter to a friend as a provocation to coauthor an irreverent remix of C18th literature.  Her friend kindly declined, but the idea continued to meow at the kitchen door until it was fed it scraps and grew big and sprawling. 

A View of the Open Sky, which also shortlisted for the 2023 Mslexia Novel Competition, is an epistolary alternate history of 1791 London, where fathers govern daughters’ consent in marriage, nonwhite Britons may not inherit property, and animals deliver the mail.  Seeking her grandmother’s legacy of financial independence and the courage to escape a forced marriage, Edith hunts for hidden treasure with the charming thief who stole her purse.  The ensemble cast explores mixed race identity, the equal merits of all Englishes, and a kaleidoscope of breakups.

Bath Novel Award 2024 Shortlisted:
ELLY JAMES for My Beautiful Boy
Book group / family drama | Unpublished

“I thought this was a very elegant exploration of a parent’s nightmare, it felt very realistic and honest in the way it captured the emotions of a mother, in their yearning for their child, but also the emotional devastation of realizing that their child has done the unthinkable.” – Catherine Cho  

ELLY JAMES was born in south London and has lived in London for most of her life.

Elly attempted her first novel aged twelve and returned to writing and storytelling around ten years ago. Her writing explores themes of loss, love and sacrifice and she writes in the evenings and weekends, around her job in higher education. She has taken several creative writing courses, at City Lit in London and with London Lit Lab, and is a member of three longstanding writing groups and one storytelling group.

After initially coming up with the idea for My Beautiful Boy a few years ago, Elly returned to the project in 2022, while on holiday in Norfolk and subsequently wrote the first draft while attending the year-long fiction masterclass at City Lit. Like all her work, it explores themes of loss, love and sacrifice. Elly has been listed for the Caledonia Novel Award and Exeter Novel Prize.

“Hugely engaging” – Monica Chakraverty Editorial Director, Cornerstones Literary Consultancy

Canadian author SANDRA NICHOLLS wins the Cornerstones PWA Longlist Prize 2024 for The Hermit, her book group novel about a widow who recruits a modern day hermit to live in her garden shed.

Sandra wins a place worth £1,980 on the 18 week Edit Your Novel virtual course from longlist prize sponsors Cornerstones Literary Consultancy and the Professional Writing Academy.

The Bath Novel Award 2024 Longlist

All listees win feedback worth £180 on their opening extract and synopsis from Monica Chakraverty, Editorial Director and Head of Scouting at Cornerstones Literary Consultancy.

Sarah Bates	All Your Numbered Bones
Julie Bosser	Hook & Dagger
Fiona Clarke	The Paper Rose
Andrea Clough	The Binding of Petronella Lightfoot
Sarah Day	Art
Bronwyn Kato	Inge & Rose
Elspeth Leadbetter	The Horse Pond
Sara Mallett	The Alchemical Game
Frances Merivale	The Exceptions
Clelia Mountford	The Hive
Sandra Nicholls	The Hermit
Carol Owen	The Good Man
S K Powell	The Latin Teacher
Susan Reid	The Geddes Girls
Steve Schlam	The Harvesting of Haystacks Kane
Margaret Sessa-Hawkins	Migratory Patterns
Christopher Shevlin	The Fairfax Redemption