British journalist and author Andrew Miller has won the Costa Book of the Year award – beating lesbian poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy.
Duffy, who is the UK's first openly-gay Poet Laureate, was shortlisted for the prize after winning the competition's preliminary poetry category for her work entitled The Bees.
Other authors who won first-rounds of the competition, thus being eligible for the Book of the Year title, were Christie Watson, Matthew Hollis and Moira Young.
Announced yesterday, Miller has won the £30,000 accolade for his novel Pure, set in a Parisian cemetery in the run up to the French revolution.
The BBC report that he said winning was "unsettling" but "deeply pleasurable".
The five short listed authors each received £5,000.
The prize was won last year by poet Jo Shapcott for her book of verse Of Mutability.
0 Comments Posted Leave a comment