Kevin the teenager's all Orange

An American who changed her name from Margaret to Lionel, at the age of 15, last night won the £30,000 Orange Prize for Fiction.

Lionel Shriver's book, We Need To Talk About Kevin, tells the story of a career woman who decides to become a mother only to discover she does not love her child. Shortly before his 16th birthday, the teenager kills nine people in a school massacre.

The book - described by judges as ' courageous' - was turned down by 30 publishers before it was finally picked up by the small firm Serpent's Tail.

Shriver, 47, dedicated her novel to struggling writers everywhere as she picked up her award in London. ' I've had a number of very lean and very hard years,'

'Having had a really hard time of it, and having been in the fiction business for about 20 years, I'd like to accept this prize on behalf of the hundreds, if not thousands, of writers - some of whom I know - who are incredibly talentedand work incredibly hard and never quite get the recognition they deserve. Maybe the moral of this story is: hang in there.'

Shriver's heroine, Eva, comes to loathe her son, Kevin, who grows up to be spiteful and cruel. She blames him both for the loss of her career and the souring of her perfect marriage.

The novel takes the form of letters from Eva to her estranged husband in which she examines if a lack of maternal love turned her son into a killer.

When it was published in the US, the book provoked a storm of debate.

Shriver is childless herself and has said she knew from the age of eight that she did not want to become a mother.

British writer Diana Evans last night won the inaugural Orange Prize for New Writers with her debut novel 26a, about twins growing up in the 1980s with their white father and homesick Nigerian mother.