Gordon Burn Prize 2021

Maya is homeless and, when her site is razed by the authorities, she’s detained. Maya is given a lifeline when a tech company looking to enhance its profile offers her a job and somewhere to live. The only condition is that Maya must document her progress on Instagram to show that anyone can be productive and perfect. Yet Maya realises that sickness is a kind of revolution. With other outcasts, Maya starts a movement: billboards promoting wellness are defaced all over London and her media feed is flooded with obscene, filthy and provocative images.

Sam Byers’ debut novel Idiopathy was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Prize and the Desmond Elliott Prize and was the winner of a Betty Trask Award. His second novel, Perfidious Albion was longlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize and the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, and shortlisted for the Encore Prize.

In the 1700s, an Irish noblewoman, on discovering her husband has been murdered, drinks handfuls of his blood and composes an extraordinary poem that reaches across the centuries. In the present day, a young mother narrowly avoids tragedy in her own life. The poem becomes an obsession for her as she sets out to discover the full story behind it. A Ghost in the Throat charts the ways in which a life can be changed by a work of art created centuries before.

Doireann Ní Ghríofa is a bilingual writer whose books explore birth, death, desire, and domesticity. Her awards include a Lannan Literary Fellowship, a Seamus Heaney Fellowship and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature.

In rhythmic prose, Abdurraqib peels away layers of resonance in Black and white cultures, the politics of American empire, and his own personal history of love and grief – whether it’s the twenty-seven seconds of ‘Gimme Shelter’ in which Merry Clayton sings, or the magnificent hours of Aretha Franklin’s homegoing; Beyoncé’s Super Bowl half-time show or a schoolyard fistfight; Dave Chapelle’s skits or a game of spades among friends.

Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His first collection of essays, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, was named a book of the year by The Los Angeles Review and Chicago Tribune, among others. His previous book, Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest, debuted on the New York Times bestseller list.

Luckenbooth begins in 1910 when the devil’s daughter rows to the shores of Leith in a coffin. The harrowing events that follow lead to a curse on the building and its residents – a curse that will last for the rest of the century. Over nine decades, 10 Luckenbooth Close bears witness to emblems of a changing world outside its walls. An infamous madam, a famous Beat poet and a coal miner who fears daylight are amongst the residents whose lives are plagued by the building’s troubled history.

Jenni Fagan is an award-winning novelist, poet, screenwriter, and playwright. She is the author of two previous novels, The Panopticon and The Sunlight Pilgrims, as well as a collection of poetry, The Dead Queen of Bohemia. She lives in Edinburgh.

Exhausted from spending eternity doing her job, an exasperated Mrs Death is seeking an opportunity to unburden her conscience when she comes across Wolf Willeford. Wolf is a troubled young writer who thinks he already knows Death until he finally meets her. Enthralled by her stories, Wolf becomes Mrs Death’s scribe, and begins to write her memoirs. As the two reflect on the losses they have experienced, their friendship grows into a surprising affirmation of hope, resilience and love.

Salena Godden is a high-profile poet based in London. She’s an activist, broadcaster, essayist and memoirist whose work has been widely anthologised. In November 2020 she was made a Fellow of The Royal Society of Literature.

As Lasley immerses herself in offshore culture and adapts to Aberdeen’s harsh climate, she is increasingly drawn inside the lives of the people she is writing about, blurring the boundaries between author and subject. When she begins a relationship with a married rig worker, she falls into an intense and potentially dangerous personal journey that pulls her even deeper into the subculture around her. Sea State is a fluidly written, dramatic and insightful memoir.

Tabitha Lasley was a journalist for ten years. She has lived in London, Johannesburg and Aberdeen. This is her first book.