Evie Wyld Pic: Roeloff Bakker

Two Goldsmiths alumni have been selected by the literary magazine Granta for their list of the 20 best British novelists under 40.

Ross Raisin, 34, and Evie Wyld, 33, join writers that include Zadie Smith and Adam Thirlwell on the prestigious once-a-decade list that recognizes the best young British authors and aims to foresee the future of literature in Britain.

When the list first began in 1983, it included such prominent writers as Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie and Martin Amis.

Since graduating from the MA in Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths, both authors have gone on to have critical success with their writing.

Wyld’s debut novel, ‘After the fire, a still small voice’, won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 2009, just one year after Raisin’s debut novel, ‘God’s Own Country’ was shortlisted for the same award.

Wyld now lives in Stockwell and works at an independent bookshop in Peckham

Ross Raisin Pic: Eamonn Mccabe

Raisin, who graduated in 2005, said: “I began my first novel at Goldsmiths, and am now starting my third. Things have gone very well for me so far, I suppose, career-wise, but it is testament to how and why I began writing, on the course, that the work itself is always more important to me than that work’s place in the book world.” He is currently a writer-in-residence for the charity First Story.