Story of woman who heads south takes prize for 'evoking spirit of the north'

Judges of the £10,000 Portico award hail Jessica Andrews’ Saltwater for showing northern identity as ‘a place within us’

Jessica Andrews has won the £10,000 Portico prize, which goes to the book deemed to “best evoke the spirit of the north”, for her story of a girl from Sunderland who feels like an outsider when she goes to university in London.

Andrews sat down to write her debut novel, Saltwater, at the age of 24, fearing that the stories of the working-class people she loved were “slipping away”. Told in fragments, exploring mother-daughter relationships and a shifting class identity, it follows Lucy as she moves south to a new life she finds overwhelming, eventually leaving London.

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