The author of Seascraper, longlisted for the Booker Prize 2025, discusses feeling compelled to write about the region where he grew up, and reveals that he wrote the novel on a churchyard bench
Benjamin Wood
Benjamin Wood grew up in Merseyside, UK, and is the author of five novels
His first novel, The Bellwether Revivals, was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award and the Commonwealth Book Prize, and won France’s Le Prix du Roman Fnac. A finalist for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, his other works have been shortlisted for the Encore Award, the CWA Gold Dagger Award and the European Prize for Literature. His fifth novel, Seascraper, was longlisted for the Booker Prize 2025.
Wood is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at King’s College London and lives in Surrey, UK, with his wife and sons.
It’s a book about dreams, an exploration of class and family, a celebration of the power and the glory of music, a challenge to the limits of literary realism, and – stunningly – a love story
The Booker Prize 2025 judges on Seascraper
All nominated books
A mesmerising portrait of a young man confined by his class and the ghosts of his family’s past, dreaming of artistic fulfilment
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