Best of Young British Writers - The Full List

Ahead of the official Granta announcement in April, bloggers, publishers, authors and editors have spent the past five days highlighting their favourite young British writers, to help me draw up an alternative list. We were looking for talented artists with the potential to soar as their careers develop. The list includes a large number of debut authors, who are often left out from the Granta lists, as well as flash fiction writers and perfromance poets, whose work is less well-documented, and less celebrated by the mainstream.

The contributors are all passionate advocates of writing. For Books' Sake has gathered a huge following over the past two years with their exciting mixture of the relevant and the irreverent. Dan Carpenter contributes to the lively spoken word scene in Manchester as part of Bad Language and the Blank Media collective. Andrew Blackman, an award-winning author in his own right, highlights the work of many new writers on his blog, whilst Dan Holloway's passion and big-heartedness shines through in the events he promotes, books he publishes and poems he writes. I'm very grateful to all of them.

The rules of entry for the Granta list are necessarily exclusive, and there are plenty of talented first-time writers who deserve recognition, but sadly fall outside of the age bracket. This is the price we pay for that rarest of beasts, a literary list which doesn't have Hilary Mantel at the top of it.

So, the full list is as follows:
Jenni Fagan
Zoe Lambert
Jenn Ashworth (x2)
Ned Beauman
Naomi Alderman
Ross Raisin
Sarah Hall
Courttia Newland
James Miller
Evie Wyld
Socrates Adams
Tom Fletcher
Rodge Glass
Jon McGregor
Vanessa Kisuule
Andy Harrod
Claire Trevein
Kirsty Logan
Sam Byers
Sam Mills
JR Crook
Tony O'Neill
Emma-Jane Unsworth
and You

Other nominations, from Twitter and the comments, included Adelle Stripe, Joe Dunthorpe, Niven Govinden, Ed Hogan, James Smythe, Dan Powell, Sarah Butler, Emily Berry, Gemma Seltzer, Chris Killen, Jack Underwood and Jonathan Trigell. Again, thanks to all who joined in with their suggestions.

So, when the long-awaited official list comes out, it will be interesting to compare up against ours. But more importantly, it will be fascinating to see how these diverse and talented writers develop over the next decade. And, as ever, if there's a writer whose case you want to argue, I'd love to hear from you.

Thom