Dyer and McInnes triumph at the Society of Authors’ annual awards

Atlantic authors David Dyer and Martin McInnes both received prestigious prizes at last night’s Society of Authors’ awards ceremony.

David Dyer was awarded the £4,000 McKitterick Prize (given to an author over the age of 40 for a debut novel) for The Midnight Watch. The novel was hailed by the judges as “an extraordinarily compelling exploration of guilt and responsibility”.

Meanwhile Martin McInnes received the £5,000 Somerset Maugham Award (designed to help young writers under 35 to enrich their work through foreign travel) for Infinite Ground, in which the author is said to “draw us into an eerie hallucinatory world”.

The complete awards (totalling £94,000, and including the Betty Trask Prize) were handed out at an event at the Army & Navy Club in London on Tuesday 20th June to authors including debuts by writers under 35, poetry, fiction, historical biography.