Living Canon

Costa Book Awards 2012: Complete list of winners

The 2012 Costa Book Awards celebrated some of the finest achievements in contemporary British and Commonwealth literature, with six categories recognizing excellence across fiction, poetry, biography, and children’s writing. Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies, the second installment in her sweeping Tudor trilogy, claimed the top Novel prize, cementing her status as one of the most important historical fiction writers of our time. The year’s selections showcased a particularly strong commitment to innovative storytelling—from Sally Gardner’s haunting Maggot Moon, which earned the Children’s Book Award with its unflinching portrayal of a dystopian future, to Mary Talbot and Bryan Talbot’s groundbreaking graphic biography Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes, which brought new dimensions to the biography category.

Beyond the marquee fiction prizes, the 2012 winners demonstrated the Costa Book Awards’ dedication to recognizing diverse literary voices and forms. Francesca Segal’s debut The Innocents won First Novel for its psychological acuity, while Kathleen Jamie’s The Overhaul captured Poetry honors with its exploration of language and craft. Even the often-overlooked Short Story prize found a worthy winner in Avril Joy’s Millie and Bird, a testament to the vitality of short fiction in the contemporary literary landscape. These selections give us a remarkable snapshot of what British and Irish writers were achieving in 2012.

Here are the complete winners across all six categories:

Biography

Children’s Book

First Novel

Novel

Poetry

Short Story