A Manchester Metropolitan PhD student and already acclaimed poet has joined the ranks of the UK’s top poets and writers by winning the Society of Authors Somerset Maugham Award 2025.
Charlotte Shevchenko Knight was presented with the prize for her debut poetry collection Food for the Dead, which was written during her doctorate studies at Manchester Met’s Manchester Writing School and explores her Ukrainian heritage and identity.
Already the recipient of the Laurel Prize for First Collection an Eric Gregory Award, Shevchenko Knight consolidates her status as one of the best and most promising young literary voices in the UK.
Established in 1947 by writer Somerset Maugham, the prestigious prize fund is designed to enable young writers to enrich their work through experience of foreign countries and has previously been won by famous writers including former poet laureate and Director of Manchester Writing School Professor Dame Carol Ann Duffy and Manchester Met Professor of Contemporary Writing Andrew McMillan, as well as Zadie Smith, Maggie O’Farrell and a host of acclaimed Manchester Met writers.
Shevchenko Knight said: “Winning this award and joining so many iconic writers who’ve also won over the decades is an honour and feels slightly surreal. It’s incredible to be recognised on such a huge scale and exciting that the judges are confident about my career trajectory.
“I’m still deciding how to invest my prize fund. Travelling and learning about other environments and cultures is a recurring theme in my poetry, so I’m looking forward to gaining even more inspiration.”
Shevchenko Knight is a poet of both British and Ukrainian heritage whose Ukrainian-born mother emigrated to the UK in the 1990s and whose family still live near Kyiv. She is in her second year of a PhD at Manchester Met’s Manchester Writing School.
Food for the Dead, her winning collection, addresses invasion, war and destruction, as well as the bonds of humanity, as it explores the war in Ukraine through a human lens.
Among the 2025 Somerset Maugham Award judges were acclaimed writers Akeem Balogun, Sandeep Parmar and Ellen Wiles.
Speaking about Shevchenko Knight’s collection, judge Sandeep Parmar said: “Charlotte Shevchenko Knight’s poems remind us that loyalty and tragedy both have long memories. With luminous language and breathtaking detail, Knight reaches into history and her family’s past to fill the mouths of the present with a familiar, yet devastating, song.”
Shevchenko Knight recently took part in a University-partnered and British Council-funded international exchange programme between Manchester and Nanjing, both UNESCO Cities of Literature, where she was inspired to write poetry about waterways.
Manchester Writing School has a long and successful history of awards, with lecturers and poets Malika Booker and Kim Moore winning the Forward Prizes in recent years and other writers including Professor Andrew McMillan winning multiple prizes including the Polari Prize for best LGBTQ+ writing.
Professor of Contemporary Writing Andrew McMillan said: “We’re immensely proud here in the School of English to have such a vibrant and world-leading postgraduate research program. Our PhD scholars teach, research and help us build international poetry communities.
“This well-deserved award for Charlotte further confirms the depth of talent in staff, students and researchers that we have here in the school, the Poetry Research Group and Manchester Poetry Library.”