Living Canon

Costa Book Awards 2017: Complete list of winners

The 2017 Costa Book Awards showcased the breadth of contemporary British and Commonwealth writing, celebrating everything from debut novels that captured readers’ hearts to established authors pushing literary boundaries. Among the five category winners were some truly breakout moments—most notably Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, which brought a deeply human and often darkly comic portrait of isolation to the First Novel category. The award, which has long championed accessible yet artful writing, revealed a year when literary merit and emotional resonance walked hand in hand across genres.

This particular year’s Costa Book Awards winners demonstrated the strength of character-driven narratives and intimate storytelling. Jon McGregor’s Reservoir 13 took the Novel prize with its fragmented, innovative approach to depicting a community, while Katherine Rundell won the Children’s Book award with The Explorer, proving that adventure stories for young readers can be both imaginative and deeply thoughtful. Helen Dunmore’s final collection, Inside the Wave, claimed the Poetry category—a poignant reminder of how the Costa Book Awards, often associated with mainstream appeal, remain important platforms for serious poetic voices.

The 2017 winners span biography, literary fiction, debut works, and children’s literature, each representing the awards’ commitment to recognizing quality across categories. Here’s a closer look at who took home the major prizes that year:

Biography

  • In the Days of Rain by Rebecca Stott

Children’s Book

First Novel

Novel

Poetry