Maggie O’Farrell and colleagues awarded the inaugural Hilary Mantel Prize for Fiction | Hilary Mantel

Anna Dempsey has won the inaugural Hilary Mantel Prize for Fiction, receiving £7,500 for her unpublished novel This is About a Crocodile and Nothing Else.

The newly created award, launched to honor the legacy of the late Booker Prize-winning novelist, aims to support unpublished and under-agented writers across the UK and Ireland.

Dempsey, a Florida-born writer and educator who now lives in London, was selected from 2,300 entries. Nigerian writer Oduak Abasi-Ekong, who lives in Manchester, won second place for her novel titled “A Kind of Resurrection,” and received 2,500 pounds sterling.

The award was created after Mantle’s death in 2022 and is supported by her long-standing agency, AM Heath. In addition to the cash prizes, both writers will receive mentoring from an agent in AM Heath and an editor in John Murray. Dempsey has also secured a place on the Arvon Foundation’s residential writing course, while Ekong will attend an advanced course at Arvon.

Bill Hamilton, Mantle’s agent, praised the range of submissions reviewed by a team of readers from AM Heath and John Murray. “The closer we get to a manageable number to recommend to judges, the greater the discrepancies in writers’ imagination, style and voice,” he said. “Settings from around the world, everything from satire to the supernatural, and from contemporary to ancient myth.”

Dempsey’s winning novel is a coming-of-age story set on the edge of the Florida Everglades, where a small town faces a water pollution crisis linked to corporate negligence. In the wake of her father’s sudden death, officially ruled a heart attack, the young protagonist becomes increasingly convinced that the corporation is responsible.

“Winning the inaugural Hilary Mantel Award is a tremendous honor,” Dempsey said. “I find it important that this award celebrates Mantel’s legacy and that my novel is, in its own way, a tribute to my father.” She began writing the book shortly after her father’s sudden death in 2020.

Ekong’s novel is a work of psychological horror inspired by West African folklore, where supernatural elements are intertwined with emotional trauma.

The judging panel was chaired by best-selling author Maggie O’Farrell and included long-time Mantel editor Nicholas Pearson. actor Ben Miles, who played Thomas Cromwell in the RSC adaptations of Mantel’s Wolf Hall series; and novelists Chetna Maru and Chigozi Obioma.

“Throughout her career, Hilary Mantel has cared deeply about novelists taking their first steps, and I’m sure she would have wanted to support these two exceptional writers,” Pearson said.

The award is open every two years to unpublished and uncredited writers in the UK and Ireland, who submit a 15,000-word excerpt.