Niamh Connolly's novel-in-progress Game Theory won the Women's Prize Trust Discoveries award. Curtis Brown Creative and Curtis Brown partner with the Women's Prize Trust and Audible to run Discoveries, a writing development award and program for unpublished women writers.
As winner, Connolly receives an offer of representation by Curtis Brown, a cash prize of £5,000 (about $6,350) and a place on a Curtis Brown Creative six-week online course. In July, she will also join CBC's specially designed two-week Discoveries Writing Development course alongside the other 15 writers longlisted for Discoveries 2024.
Zeynep Kazmaz is this year's Discoveries Scholar for her novel-in-progress Viscid Residue. She has been awarded a scholarship place on a three-month Writing Your Novel course with CBC, where she will receive support to develop her novel.
Judging panel chair Kate Mosse said: "The works-in-progress of both our winner Niamh Connolly and scholar Zeynep Kazmaz had everything to intrigue and engage a reader--a strong sense of place, distinctive characterization, accomplished writing, strong emotion and exquisite storytelling. Most of all, each of the judges could not wait to follow these two very different stories through to the end."