Costa Book Awards 2010s: A decade of winners
The 2010s were a golden age for the Costa Book Awards, a decade when British and Irish literature seemed to burst with innovation, intimacy, and fearless storytelling. From the early years’ fascination with memory and family—Edmund de Waal’s ceramic-inflected meditation on objects in The Hare with Amber Eyes, Maggie O’Farrell’s intricately woven The Hand That First Held Mine—the awards tracked a literary culture increasingly interested in form-breaking and the textures of interior life. By mid-decade, the Costa had become essential reading for anyone following contemporary fiction, particularly as novels like Kate Atkinson’s Life after Life and Ali Smith’s How to Be Both challenged narrative conventions and Sally Rooney’s Normal People arrived to define millennial consciousness for a generation.
What made this decade remarkable was how the Costa Book Awards celebrated breadth alongside ambition. While prize-winning novelists experimented with structure and voice, the biography category was experiencing its own renaissance—Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk, Andrea Wulf’s The Invention of Nature, and Bart van Es’s The Cut Out Girl demonstrated that non-fiction could be as lyrical and gripping as any novel. Children’s literature, too, received serious recognition, with writers like Moira Young, Sally Gardner, and Frances Hardinge proving that young readers deserved storytelling of the highest order. The awards also expanded to include a dedicated Short Story category in 2012, recognizing the enduring vitality of the form.
The Costa Book Awards of the 2010s ultimately mirrored a decade of profound social change, where established voices and breakthrough debuts rubbed shoulders on the shortlist, and where genre boundaries became increasingly permeable. Whether you’re revisiting a favorite winner or discovering what you missed, the decade below tells the story of a literary culture at once rooted and restless.
2010
Biography
The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal
Children’s Book
Out of Shadows by Jason Wallace
First Novel
Witness the Night by Kishwar Desai
Novel
- The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O’Farrell
Poetry
Of Mutability by Jo Shapcott
2011
Biography
Children’s Book
- Blood Red Road by Moira Young
First Novel
Tiny Sunbirds Far Away by Christie Watson
Novel
Pure by Andrew Miller
Poetry
The Bees by Carol Ann Duffy
2012
Biography
Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes by Mary Talbot and Bryan Talbot
Children’s Book
Maggot Moon by Sally Gardner
First Novel
The Innocents by Francesca Segal
Novel
- Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
Poetry
The Overhaul by Kathleen Jamie
Short Story
Millie and Bird by Avril Joy
2013
Biography
The Pike by Lucy Hughes-Hallett
Children’s Book
- Goth Girl and the Ghost of a Mouse by Chris Riddell
First Novel
The Shock of the Fall by Nathan Filer
Novel
Life after Life by Kate Atkinson
Poetry
Drysalter by Michael Symmons Roberts
Short Story
- The Keeper of the Jackalopes by Angela Readman
2014
Biography
H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
Children’s Book
Five Children on the Western Front by Kate Saunders
First Novel
Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey
Novel
How to Be Both by Ali Smith
Poetry
My Family and Other Superheroes by Jonathan Edwards
Short Story
- Fishskin, Hareskin by Zoe Gilbert
2015
Biography
The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf
Children’s Book
- The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge
First Novel
The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley
Novel
A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson
Poetry
- 40 Sonnets by Don Paterson
Short Story
- Rogey by Danny Murphy
2016
Biography
- Dadland: A Journey into Uncharted Territory by Keggie Carew
Children’s Book
The Bombs That Brought Us Together by Brian Conaghan
First Novel
Golden Hill by Francis Spufford
Novel
Days Without End by Sebastian Barry
Poetry
Falling Awake by Alice Oswald
Short Story
- Dirty Little Fishes by Jess Kidd
2017
Biography
In the Days of Rain by Rebecca Stott
Children’s Book
The Explorer by Katherine Rundell
First Novel
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
Novel
Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor
Poetry
Inside the Wave by Helen Dunmore
2018
Biography
- The Cut Out Girl: A Story of War and Family, Lost and Found by Bart van Es
Children’s Book
The Skylarks’ War by Hilary McKay
First Novel
The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
Novel
Normal People by Sally Rooney
Poetry
- Assurances by J. O. Morgan
2019
Biography
- The Volunteer by Jack Fairweather
Children’s Book
- Asha & the Spirit Bird by Jasbinder Bilan
First Novel
- The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins
Novel
- Middle England by Jonathan Coe
Poetry
- Flèche by Mary Jean Chan