Caryl Lewis won the 2023 Wales Book of the Year Award for Drift, her debut novel in the English language. She also took the Rhys Davies Trust Fiction Award. Pridd by Llŷr Titus was named the Wales Book of the Year in Welsh.
The awards celebrate books across four categories (poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and children & young people) in both English and Welsh. Each category winner receives £1,000 (about $1,305), with the two overall winners getting an additional £3,000 (about $3,925).
Lewis has won the Welsh-language Wales Book of the Year Award twice in the past--for Martha, Jac, a Sianco in 2005 and Y Bwthyn in 2016--making her the first writer to have won the prize in both languages.
Judge Emily Burnett said of Drift: "This piece of writing made us want to read out loud, to feel the tangible lure of magical words in our mouths. Wales hums throughout this writer’s work, and in doing so, this book seems to, in some ways, defy the categories.... It is a stunning piece of fiction, that swells with a magical lyricism and captures with sheer luminosity its characters, story and sense of place."