Derek Owusu, Guy Gunaratne and Carys Davies interviewed Suzi Feay

Three newly feted writers, Derek Owusu, Guy Gunaratne and Carys Davies, discuss their different writing styles and the impact of their work being thrust into the limelight after they were shortlisted for or won major awards.

Owusu won the Desmond Elliott Prize in 2020 for his ‘profound’ semi-autobiographical debut novel-in-verse That Reminds Me about foster homes and mental health. His latest novel is Losing the Plot, a portrayal of a mother-son relationship, which has been shortlisted and longlisted for several prizes. Owusu was named Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists 2023.

Gunaratne’s debut novel, In Our Mad and Furious City, a story of three young men on a London council estate over a mad 48 hours, was longlisted for the 2018 Booker Prize. His new novel is Mister, Mister, a novel of Britishness and unbelonging.

‘Gunaratne fits a whole nation inside one complex character and in doing so shows us our bones and our souls.’ Leone Ross

Davies’s West, a parable of early frontier life in America, won the 2019 Wales Book of the Year Fiction Award and was runner-up in the Society of Authors’ McKitterick Prize 2019 and shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2019. Her forthcoming novel is Clear, a story set on a remote Scottish island with themes of loneliness, language and the connections between us.

‘With Clear, Carys Davies has again done brilliantly what she does best – saying most by saying least. She has the rare gift of eloquent brevity. Clear is astute, moving, unexpected.’ Penelope Lively

Discussions are chaired by journalist and reviewer for the FT Suzi Feay.