People Like Us by William Rayfet Hunter has been named as the winner of the #Merky Books New Writer’s Prize for 2023.
The prize, which was launched last year by Stormzy’s publishing imprint at Penguin Random House, aims to spotlight unpublished and under represented writers between the ages of 16 and 30 from the UK and Ireland.
Hunter, a 29-year-old writer and junior doctor from Manchester, scooped the award for his submission which follows the story of “a boy who falls in love with a family and into a world in which he doesn’t belong”.
Following Hunter’s win, Stormzy said: “So happy to crown Will as the winner of this year’s prize. An extremely talented writer and I can’t wait to read more.”
People Like Us was chosen from almost 1,000 submissions by a panel of judges, which included #Merky Books founder and Brit Award-winning rapper Stormzy, author Candice Brathwaite, radio and TV presenter Nihal Arthanayake, independent bookseller Fleur Sinclair and athlete Katarina Johnson-Thompson.
Hunter, who now lives and works in East London, said: “I am incredibly excited to be offered this opportunity to share my writing with the world.
“Writing is something that I’ve wanted to do for as long as I can remember, but I’d begun to feel like that door was closed to me.
“It’s easy to feel as queer black people, that our stories are not worth telling – that in some way they do not fit with what the world wants to read about.
“I am so grateful that the #Merky Books team has seen the potential in my story.”
The winning story, set in the present day between the south of France and London, is told from the point of view of an anonymous narrator who builds a friendship with a girl called Lily Blake.
Throughout the novel themes of race, class, money, drugs and status are all explored, with an overriding question of what part of ourselves we lose when we fall in love.
The writers longlisted for the award were invited to attend a writer’s camp, where they were introduced to literary agents and authors and given the opportunity to attend talks and workshops where they learnt about the publishing process.
Arthanayake said: “A beautifully written array of characters whose lives I want to explore further.
“Will constructs his characters with care and grace and I am genuinely intrigued to see how the central protagonist navigates his way through these competing forces of sexuality, race, class and money.”
While Sinclair said: “A fresh voice in a contemporary setting. I wanted to keep reading.”
People Will Like Us will be published under the #Merky Books imprint.
Previous recipients of the prize include inaugural winner Hafsa Zayyan, author of We Are All Birds Of Uganda, Monika Radojevic, author of poetry collection Teeth In The Back of My Neck, and Jyoti Patel whose novel The Things That We Lost was published last month.
