Much of my poetry has been inspired or provoked by the blues’ ] Have you ever made a literary pilgrimage?

To witness the mid-meal apocalypse: James Ellroy, Ishmael Reed, Zora Neale Hurston, Blaise Cendrars, Begum Rokeya, Marco Vassi, Alan Moore and Anna Kavan. The best and worst things about where you live? My one slight criticism is that the setup (whilst important to give context to the characters) phase of the book laboured the point a little. Without giving anything away, I'll just say I pushed myself through the first half of the book a little bit, but read the second half more or less in one sitting.There are a few plot contrivances that I found problematic, most notably the preface, and the rather pat ending, but despite those I enjoyed the story and would gladly read more in the series. I don't even know where to start with this book. First, Netgalley cataloged this as a YA book. It is so not a YA book. Victoria is twenty and a boring twenty at that. But she is not alone in her dullness. All of the spies and crime boss just feel kind of flat. In no way did this novel about international intrigue actually intrigue me. The whole book feels clunky like it doesn't quite fit together correctly. Several times while I was reading I thought that it felt like it needed a good editing which is why I wasn't surprised when I discovered that "Oxblood" started it's life as self-publish. It's a familiar story that has been told many times and has been told better many times. When Victoria realizes something could be terribly wrong with her brother’s trip though, she gets on a plane and leaves for Italy even though it terrifies her. Once there she realizes how hard it is going to be to find Gil. She also meets a certain someone who ends up showing her a whole new world that she didn’t even know existed while at the same time finally giving her a purpose. Victoria is a young woman who is working at a diner and has no real idea what she wants to do with her life. So instead she uses her brother going to law school as a reason for not going to school and furthering her education. While her brother is away in Italy for school, her and her best friend have end up living together with the occasional stop in from her Vic’s freeloading boyfriend. I loved Vic’s best friend and how she helped her not be so uptight about thing sometimes. We all need a person like that in our lives. As for the freeloading boyfriend he needs to go, and I was so happy when Vic finally stood up to him. Rendered with such care and specificity that it feels wholly original...a rich, dark, atmospheric family saga that contains so much buried love and anger and grief and sexual jealousy and bitter disappointment. I emerged from it exhilarated' -- JOHANNA THOMAS-CORR

An unruly novel about northern nanas in a haunted council house probably sounded like a risky investment to mainstream gatekeepers. There was little that was recent and comparable with Oxblood to point at and say: Well, that broke through; this might just too. What are the traps and tropes associated with working-class fiction? The Charlotte Aitken Trust would like to thank the judges of this year’s award for producing such an outstanding shortlist. It is a showcase for the vitality and range of talent in a younger generation. Tom Benn’s novel Oxblood is a worthy winner, though the prize could have gone to any of the shortlist — which must have made the judges’ task especially hard. We warmly congratulate all four authors and look forward to watching their careers blossom.‘ Cheers. It couldn’t be more surreal and encouraging to win an award that has championed so many writers whose work means something to me. Tell us about your latest novel, Oxblood. It took eight years to write?Oxblood, Benn’s fourth novel, which was also longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize 2022, is set in the heart of Manchester’s working-class community in the 1980s, during a period of rising unemployment and declining industry. With a rich atmosphere and vividly drawn characters, Benn spotlights the culture and legacy of patriarchal brutality as it shadows and shapes the lives of three women left behind. I’ve been a pilgrim for art and film: visiting Den Bosch for Bosch’s paintings, and Poulsbo and North Bend [in] Washington for Twin Peaks. I’d love to reach Oxford, Mississippi, for a Faulkner pilgrimage. What is the best writing advice you have heard?

She's really worried, so off to Italy she flies. Starting with the last hotel that he stayed in, she starts asking questions. To her surprise, she's greeted by a good looking man .. pointing a gun at her. Seems like he's looking for her brother, as well.

Tom Benn writes well about women and their lives, the changing attitudes towards them and their expectations of life from the ‘60s to the ‘80s, and by implication, the contrast with the present day. All his characters are nuanced and he evokes some sympathy for even the worst behaved of them. In 2013, after all three YA novels in The Lake Trilogy were written and she had let them sit long enough, AnnaLisa took matters into her own hands and self-published the titles within just a few months of each other. Received well by readers young and not-so-young alike, The Lake Trilogy has enjoyed breakout success, selling close to half-million copies the first year. It was a close call, because we were having to decide between four wonderful and wildly different books – but in the end, to me, it was Tom Benn who was doing the boldest and richest thing, using an unflinching sympathy and a fascinatingly mutated version of the crime writer’s tool-kit to carry the reader into the intimate depths of a household of violence. It’s a disconcerting book, with its insistence that a family’s heart of darkness is still despite it all a heart, and I wouldn’t call it reassuring, yet it shows us that there are few places literature can’t take us, if the writer is brave enough, and gifted enough.‘ Vic has the natural observational powers of a long-time spy, and this skill makes her an asset to the team. Her abilities remind me of a cross between Cassie from The Naturals series and Veronica Mars. So of course, I enjoyed watching her notice everything. Tom Benn is the winner of the 2022 Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year Award for his novel, Oxblood Martin Doyle

AnnaLisa completed her undergraduate degree in Human Services at Wingate University and her Master's degree in Counseling from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. During her thirteen years in the Human Services field, AnnaLisa worked with children in group homes and foster care, and spent two years in private practice counseling individuals, families, and couples. The Dodds family once ruled Manchester's underworld; now the men are dead, leaving three generations of women trapped in a house haunted by violence, harbouring an unregistered baby. What a voice Tom Benn has got, what a feel for character and place, and what an uncompromising approach he has to his subject and material. He’s gritty but totally empathetic, and inhabits his milieu of 1980s Manchester with total conviction and no attempt to soften the voices of his characters We were bowled over as a judging panel by Oxblood, and feel confident too that Tom is a talent who will grow and grow.‘The Dodds family once ruled Manchester’s underworld; now the men are dead, leaving three generations of women trapped in a house haunted by violence, harbouring an unregistered baby.