Jon Ransom wins second Polari Prize

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Jon Ransom wins second Polari Prize

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Polari Prize

The winners of the 2024 Polari Prizes were announced as Nicola Dinan, Jon Ransom and Sarah Hagger-Holt at a ceremony at the British Library tonight. 

Dinan took home the Polari First Book Prize for her tale of young love and transformation, Bellies (Penguin). 

Ransom received the Polari Book Prize for his story of a tense and mesmerising love triangle, The Gallopers (Muswell Press), making him the first-ever winner of two successive Polari Prizes. 

Meanwhile, Sarah Hagger-Holt was awarded the biannual Polari Children’s and YA Prize for The Fights That Make Us (Usborne), a heart-warming tale of acceptance, which draws on LGBTQ+ history. 

Paul Burston, founder and chair of judges for both adult categories, said:

“At first glance, this year’s prize-winning novels couldn’t be more different—one contemporary, the other historical; one urban, the other rural; one exploring the trans experience from a modern British, cross-cultural perspective, the other looking at working class gay lives in 1950s Norfolk. But both push the boundaries of LGBTQ fiction; both feature the formal device of a play within the main narrative; and both explore the loves and lives of queer characters in surprising new ways. Beautifully written, deeply moving and dazzlingly original, these are novels destined to become modern classics.”