Comedian Fern Brady and Booker-shortlisted writer Paul Murray win first Nero book awards

The Booker prize shortlisted author Paul Murray and the comedian Fern Brady have been announced as the winners of their categories in the inaugural Nero book awards.

The Irish writer Murray topped the fiction category for his novel The Bee Sting, while Brady's memoir Strong Female Character was chosen as the best in the nonfiction category. Close to Home by Michael Magee and The Swifts by Beth Lincoln won the debut fiction and children's fiction categories respectively.

The Nero book awards were launched in May last year, nearly a year after Costa abruptly scrapped its book awards after 50 years. The new prize aims to celebrate the "best reads of the year" by writers based in the UK and Ireland. The category winners have been chosen by judges including the writers Sara Collins, Sarfraz Manzoor, Anthony Quinn and Dave Rudden. The four writers will each receive £5,000, and will now compete for the £30,000 Nero Gold prize, judged by a panel chaired by the Booker winner Bernardine Evaristo.

"When literature is under threat from the addictive distractions of social media and the internet, literary prizes not only celebrate individual writers and elevate careers, but draw attention to a beautiful art form that requires and rewards sustained concentration and engagement with words, other people's lives, and the imagination," said Evaristo.