Styles wins UK Wilbur Smith Prize for No Country for Girls

Australian author Emma Styles has won the UK’s Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize for Best Published Novel, worth £10,000 (A$19,160), for her debut outback noir No Country for Girls (Sphere).

Styles’ novel—a road-trip thriller that follows two young women on the run across Australia—was chosen from a shortlist of six novels. Judge and 2022 prize winner Giles Kristian said: ‘For this prize, No Country for Girls has everything you could want—living, breathing characters, evocative descriptions and a journey across an unforgiving landscape. It is an adventure novel through and through.’

Styles was announced as the winner at an event in London on 18 October. The prize—which has categories for published, unpublished and young writers—is open to writers of any nationality writing in English, and is based around the ethos ‘an adventure for everyone’. More information about the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize, including this year’s other category winners, is on the website.

Category: Awards Local news