Benjamin Wood (writer)

Benjamin Wood
Benjamin Wood in 2014
Born	1981 (age 43–44)
Occupation	Novelist
Alma mater	University of British Columbia
Period	2012 – present
Genre	Literary fiction
Notable works	Seascraper (2025)

Benjamin Wood is a British author and academic who has written five novels.^[1]

Wood's first novel, The Bellwether Revivals, was shortlisted for the 2012 Costa Book Award for First Novel^[2] and the 2012 Commonwealth Book Prize.^[3] It won France's Prix du roman Fnac in 2014.^[4]

His second novel, The Ecliptic, was inspired by the three months he spent in Istanbul for an artist-in-residence cultural exchange programme organised by the British Council.^[5] It was shortlisted for the 2016 Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award^[6] and the RSL Encore Award.^[7] His third novel, A Station on the Path to Somewhere Better, was shortlisted for the 2019 European Union Prize for Literature^[8] and the CWA Gold Dagger.^[9]

In 2022 Wood published his fourth novel, The Young Accomplice. It was chosen as a book of the year by The Irish Times,^[10] The New Statesman,^[11] The Spectator,^[7] The Sunday Times,^[7] The Times^[12] and The Week.^[13] A serialised version was broadcast on BBC Radio 4.^[14]

Wood's fifth novel, Seascraper, was longlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize.^[15]

Wood was born in 1981,^[16] to parents who separated before he reached adulthood,^[17] and grew up in Merseyside.^[1] His childhood was spent in a nursing home run by his parents.^[18]

As a young man, Wood realised he had a gift for fiction when his sixth-form teacher was convinced that the dramatic monologue he had written for an assignment had been plagiarised from an existing work.^[19] At the age of 17 he abandoned his A-levels in the hope of pursuing a career as a singer-songwriter, but narrowly failed to get a record deal.^[20] He went on to gain a BTEC in art and design, followed by a degree in screenwriting from the University of Central Lancashire.^[21] A Commonwealth Scholarship, obtained in 2004^[22] with the help of a reference from the writer Michael Marshall Smith,^[21] enabled him to obtain a MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia.^[23] While living in Vancouver Wood was the fiction editor of Prism International.^[22]

After returning from Canada Wood worked for several years as a lecturer at Birkbeck, University of London,^[18] co-founding and directing their undergraduate creative writing programme.^[7] In 2016 he joined King's College London, where he is a senior lecturer in creative writing.^[7] He lives in Surrey with his wife and sons.^[1]

• —— (2012). The Bellwether Revivals. London: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0857206954.
• —— (2015). The Ecliptic. London: Scribner. ISBN 978-1471126703.
• —— (2018). A Station on the Path to Somewhere Better. London: Scribner. ISBN 978-1471126772.
• —— (2022). The Young Accomplice. London: Penguin. ISBN 978-0241438244.
• —— (2025). Seascraper. London: Penguin. ISBN 978-1405975087.