Stockport born Author and screenwriter Tom Benn has been named winner of the 2022 Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Trust Young Writer of the Year Award for his novel, Oxblood (, which explores the generational trauma caused by patriarchal violence.
The novel is set in 1980s Wythenshawe, and is the story of the Dodds family, who once ruled the Manchester underworld, and the legacy they leave behind.
Sunday Times literary editor Johanna Thomas-Corr,said of the novel at the awards ceremony:
“Tom Benn is one of publishing’s best kept secrets. His story about the struggles of three generations of women in a Manchester crime clan has been rendered with care and specificity. The result is an atmospheric family saga that contains so much buried love, anger, grief, sexual jealousy and bitter disappointment.”
Benn tweeted after the award
“Just got back home after winning(!) the @YoungWriterYear. A passenger overheard my missus and me talking on the train and then the whole carriage full of lovely & absolutely hammered randoms took turns holding the award and shaking my hand. One of the best nights of my life!”
The novel has been described as a profound meditation on how the ravages of the past continue to shape the possibilities of our future by the bookchain Waterstones.
