Maggie O’Farrell and fellow judges award inaugural Hilary Mantel prize for fiction

Anna Dempsey’s This Is About an Alligator and Nothing Else, a coming-of-age story set in Florida, took the award, which aims to support unpublished and un-agented writers

Anna Dempsey has been named the winner of the inaugural Hilary Mantel prize for fiction, taking home £7,500 for her unpublished novel This Is About an Alligator and Nothing Else.

The newly established award, launched to honour the legacy of the late Booker prize-winning novelist, aims to support unpublished and un-agented writers across the UK and Ireland.