Yasmin Zaher wins the 2025 Dylan Thomas Prize for The Coin
Yasmin Zaher's debut novel The Coin has won the £20,000 Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize, awarded to writers aged 39 or under.
Yasmin Zaher has won the 2025 Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize for her debut novel, The Coin. The award was presented at a ceremony in Swansea on Thursday 15 May 2025, in the prize's twentieth year. It is worth £20,000 and is open to writers aged 39 or under.
The Coin follows a young Palestinian woman teaching at a middle school in New York who becomes drawn into a scheme reselling luxury handbags. In the UK the novel is published by Footnote Press, which brought out the paperback on 1 May 2025. Swansea University reported that the judges, chaired by the Indian author Namita Gokhale, reached a unanimous decision.
The shortlist also included books by Seán Hewitt, Ferdia Lennon, Yael van der Wouden, Rebecca Watson and Eley Williams. The rest of the panel were Professor Daniel Williams of Swansea University, Jan Carson, Mary Jean Chan and Max Liu.
Why it matters: the Dylan Thomas Prize is one of the few major awards defined by the writer's age, not by genre or form, so a debut novel sits beside poetry and short fiction. Because it looks only at writers at the start of their careers, its shortlists are a useful guide to new voices. It is also a reminder that a small independent publisher can put a debut in front of a large international prize.
Sources: Swansea University: Yasmin Zaher wins the Dylan Thomas Prize; Kirkus Reviews: Winner of the 2025 Dylan Thomas Prize.