The Eccles Institute & Hay Festival Global Writer's Award
The Eccles Institute & Hay Festival Global Writer’s Award grants £20,000 annually to two writers for a yet-to-be-published book relating to the Americas. Applicants are expected to make extensive use of the British Library’s Americas collections. The shortlisted authors are: Peter Brathwaite, Elena Medel, Marie Mitchell, Ingrid Persaud, Emma Warren, Lauren Working, and Joseph Zárate.
The British Library and Hay Festival are delighted to reveal the shortlist for the 2025 Eccles Institute and Hay Festival Global Writer’s Award. Given annually to two writers in the early stages of a new book relating to the Americas, the £20,000 prize is now in its 14th year.
Seven writers make up the 2025 shortlist: British Barbadian opera singer and author Peter Brathwaite; Spanish novelist, essayist and poet Elena Medel; British Irish music journalist and broadcaster Emma Warren; Peruvian writer and journalist Joseph Zarate; historian and literary scholar Lauren Working; British Caribbean writer, chef and mental health advocate Marie Mitchell; and Trinidadian writer, artist and academic Ingrid Persaud.
Two winners each hold the Eccles Institute & Hay Festival Global Writer’s Award for one year from 1 January 2025 and receive £20,000, in four quarterly grants; a residency at the British Library, with unique access to the expertise of the Library’s curatorial staff; the chance to appear at future Hay Festival editions with their published work; and the opportunity to work with the Eccles Institute to develop and facilitate activities and events related to their research at the British Library.
Thanks to the support of the Charlotte Aitken Trust the remaining shortlisted projects will be awarded £2,500 to facilitate access to the Library’s collections.
The award is judged by a panel comprising Eccles Fisher Associates Director Catherine Eccles, Hay Festival International Director Cristina Fuentes La Roche, Head of the Eccles Institute for the Americas and Oceania at the British Library Polly Russell, historian Colin Grant, and Mercedes Aguirre, Deputy Head of the Eccles Institute.
Polly Russell, Head of the Eccles Institute for the Americas and Oceania at the British Library, said: “We are so excited about the Writer’s Award shortlist for 2025. It includes memoir, history, biography, fiction and, for the first time, a narrative cookery book. Each project focuses on a fascinating aspect of the Americas through the British Library’s collection. With this group of outstanding writers, making a final decision on the winners will be harder than ever.”
Cristina Fuentes La Roche, international director at Hay Festival, said: “This year’s Eccles Institute & Hay Festival Writer’s Award shortlist offers a snapshot of the issues provoking and occupying writers on the Americas today. You will find endless inspiration in the broad mix of ideas offered here. Any one of these would make a worthy winner and we look forward to supporting and sharing their work for many years to come.”
The winners will be announced at an awards reception at the British Library on Wednesday 4 December. The 2024 winners were writers Hannah Lowe and Alia Trabucco Zerán.
ABOUT THE SHORTLISTED WRITERS
Peter Brathwaite
Award winning British Barbadian opera singer Peter Brathwaite FRSA works across different art forms to excavate and platform the stories of suppressed voices. He has written for The Guardian and The Independent, and he is a prominent speaker on performance, identity, and restorative justice in the arts. His is book, Rediscovering Black Portraiture, was published in 2023.
His submitted work for the Award is Not All of Me Will Die, a non-fiction exploration of identity, history and memory, through the lens of his Barbadian and British heritage. The judges said: “We were inspired by the scope and energy of Peter Brathwaite’s project. Combining memoir with archival research which promises to weave a complex family legacy together with the history of Barbadian and British enslavement and migration.”
Elena Medel
Based in Madrid, Elena Medel is the author of the poetry books Mi primer bikini, Tara and Chatterton, and winner of the Francisco Umbral Book of the Year Award for her novel Las maravillas. Her essays on culture and politics have been published in El País, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and The New York Times, among others.
Her submission for the Award is for the first biography of the writer, publisher and printer Concha Mendez. Born in Madrid in the late nineteenth century, Mendez lived at different times in Spain, Argentina, Cuba and Mexico. The judges said: “We all agreed that Elena Medel’s proposal to write a biography of Concha Mendez was timely and important. We can’t wait to discover what Medel’s archival explorations will uncover about Mendez and the world she inhabited, and look forward to reading about this fascinating and inspiring woman.”
Emma Warren
Emma Warren is an author, journalist and broadcaster documenting music culture. Her published works include Make Some Space, which was a MOJO Book of the Year, and Steam Down, which was listed as the Irish Times read of the year.
Her project for the Award, Sounds Like Wonder, is an original take on devotional music. Moving beyond the religious, her book will travel across space and time to explore how musicians and audiences from Brazil, to Salvador to Baltimore and beyond gather to share sounds that relate to the sacred or transcendent. The judges said: “Emma Warren’s Sounds Like Wonder is an enthralling and ambitious project that explores devotional music beyond the limits of religion. Written with an engaging verve and wit, the judges are sure the book will be as joyful and revolutionary as the transcendental idea of devotion that underpins myriad forms of music.”
Joseph Zarate
Born in Lima, Peru, Joseph Zárate is an award-winning journalist, writer and editor. He is the author of the non-fiction books Guerras del interior and Algo nuestro sobre la tierra. He has served as deputy editor of the magazines Etiqueta Negra and Etiqueta Verde and was awarded a 2018 Ochberg Fellowship by the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma of the School of Journalism at Columbia University in New York.
His award submission, Todo nace en el agua y muere en ella, takes inspiration from Zarate’s 90-day journey on foot and boat following the same route of Spanish conquistador, Francisco de Orellan, five centuries ago when he set out to ‘discover’ the Amazon River. It will be the first account of the Amazon River, its communities, cities and history written by a Latin American with Amazonian indigenous roots. The judges explained: “We were keen to support this account of a ninety-day journey along the world’s longest river, the first by a writer with indigenous roots. Through the voices and stories of those to live in and of the Amazon, Zerate will reveal what we should learn from the indigenous, riverside and Afro-Amazonian peoples to address the climate crisis.”
Lauren Working
Lauren Working is a historian and literary scholar based at the University of York, exploring the influence of the Americas and its people on Tudor and Stuart art, literature, and politics. Her book, The Making of an Imperial Polity: Civility and America in the Jacobean Metropolis jointly won the Royal Historical Society’s Whitfield Prize in 2021.
Her submitted work for the Award, A Golden World, will trace the transatlantic journeys and histories of flora, fauna and cultural artefacts to explore the influence of the Americas on Tudor and Stuart culture. The judges said: “We loved this unexpected and original take on understanding the Renaissance and its connections with the Americas through the material culture of the time. A deep history grounded in rich archival evidence, A Golden World promises to tell a new story about the Americas and early modern England as inextricably connected in complicated ways.”
Marie Mitchell
Marie Mitchell is a celebrated writer, chef, and mental health advocate who explores her British-Caribbean heritage through food. Her debut cookbook, Kin: Caribbean Recipes for the Modern Kitchen celebrates the powerful connections food creates linking us to our families, our culture, and to people and places around the world.
Her project submitted for the Award, Roots, is a cookbook with context. Based on archival research it will explore the myriad influences which have shaped Caribbean cuisine including the culinary and cultural legacies of indigenous communities, European colonisers indentured labourers and enslaved populations. The judges said: “We were fascinated by Mitchell's exploration of the history of Caribbean cuisine in Roots. Mitchell's book connects recipes and essays to illustrate how Caribbean cookery has been shaped by the region's history of colonialism, slavery and migration, drawing connections between food, identity, community and sustainability.”
Ingrid Persaud
Born in San Fernando, Trinidad, Ingrid Persaud is the author of the short story, The Sweet Sop, which won the BBC National Short Story Award and the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Her debut novel, Love After Love, won of the Costa First Novel Award, Author’s Club First Novel Award and the Indie Book Award for Fiction. Her latest work The Lost Love Songs of Boysie Singh was published in 2024.
Her Award submission is for a novel called Out with Lanterns which will blend fiction with historical research to tell a story of the legacies of indentureship as felt through three generations. Moving through three countries - Trinidad, Surinam and the Netherlands - and from the nineteenth century to the present day, Out with Lanterns touches on experiences of poverty, injustice, migration and erasure to connect a complicated present with a complicated past. The judges said: “We were captivated by the premise of Out With Lanterns, a novel that explores the intergenerational impact of British and Dutch indentured history in the Caribbean through the story of two women drawn together by an unexpected event. Persaud's project blends fiction and archival research, moving between the nineteenth century and the present day, speaking to themes of social justice, poverty, family and migration.”The Eccles Institute & Hay Festival Global Writer's Award is a highly prestigious annual literary award of £20,000 for a current writing project exploring the Americas.
The award facilitates and inspires world-class storytelling in the UK and across the Americas, supporting writers in the creative stage of a new fiction or non-fiction project. The prize grants a year-long residency at the British Library and access to curatorial expertise within the Library’s world class Americas collections.
The Writer’s Award is celebrated globally through a dynamic series of events profiling winners at Hay Festival editions in Colombia, Peru, Mexico and Wales, as awardees join forces with other celebrated writers and thinkers to explore themes central to the Library’s Americas collections, championing new perspectives to audiences in the UK and Latin America.
What's the prize?
Two winners will hold the Writer’s Award for one year from 1 January 2025, and will receive:
£20,000, in four quarterly grants
Unique access to the expertise of the British Library’s curatorial staff
The chance to appear at future Hay Festival Global editions with their published work.
The winners will also have the opportunity to work with the Eccles Institute to develop and facilitate activities and events related to their research at the British Library.
They’ll be in good company. Previous winners include...
2024
Hannah Lowe and Alia Trabucco Zerán are the current Writer’s Award holders. Lowe won for a lyrical, hybrid memoir, Moy: In Search of Nelsa Lowe, where she uses the intimate story of her Chinese Jamaican aunt as a device for exploring the history of the Chinese in Jamaica. Trabucco Zerán won for Impudence ('Descaro'), where she weaves fiction with memoir and essay to explore portrayals of Latin American women and our relationship with the female face, identity and loss.
2023
Ayanna Lloyd Banwo won for Dark Eye Place which tells the story of a family house, passed down to the daughter of each generation. Jarred McGinnis won for The Mountain Weight, which mines his family’s history, from the American Civil War to the present day, to examine themes of masculinity, family and migration.
2022
Philip Clark won for Sound and the City, a history of the sound of New York City and an investigation into what makes New York sound like New York. Javier Montes won for Trópico de Londres (Tropic of London), telling the story of Latin American artists, writers and intellectual exiles in London during the second half of the 20th century.
2021
Pola Oloixarac won for Atlas Literario del Amazonas (Literary Atlas of the Amazon) – a work of creative non-fiction revealing the secret history of the Amazon. Imaobong Umoren won for Empire Without End: A New History of Britain and the Caribbean – an expansive new history of the 400 year relationship between Britain and the Caribbean.
2020
Novelist and writer Chloe Aridjis for her novel Reports from the Land of the Bats and writer and editor Daniel Saldaña París for his novel Principio de mediocridad.
2019
Writer Rachel Hewitt and novelist Sara Taylor. Hewitt is a Lecturer in Creative Writing, and author, Sara Taylor is a novelist as well as co-director and editor of creative-critical publisher Seam Editions.
Portrait of the award winners by Clara Molden.
2018
Novelist and short story writer Stuart Evers, and the author, librettist and screenwriter Tessa McWatt.
2017
Author Hannah Kohler and writer and musician Bob Stanley.
2016
Author and editor William Atkins, and author Alison MacLeod. Atkins' The Immeasurable World: Journeys in Desert Places was published by Faber in 2018.
2015
Professor Sarah Churchwell and novelist Benjamin Markovits. Markovits' novel A Weekend in New York was published by Faber in 2018.
2014
Critic and writer Olivia Laing and journalist Erica Wagner. Laing's book The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone was published by Picador in 2016 and was shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize. Wagner's Chief Engineer: The Man Who Built the Brooklyn Bridge was published in 2017 by Bloomsbury.
2013
Historian Andrea Wulf and poet and novelist John Burnside. Wulf’s book The Invention of Nature: The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt, the lost Hero of Science was published by John Murray in October 2015 and won the 2015 Costa Biography Award and 2016 Royal Society Science Book Prize. Burnside's novel Ashland and Vine was published by Jonathan Cape in 2017.
2012
Writer Sheila Rowbotham and novelist Naomi Wood. During her 2012 residency, Wood researched her novel, Mrs Hemingway, which was published by Picador in 2014. Rowbotham's group biography Rebel Crossings: New Women, Free Lovers, and Radicals in Britain and the United States was published by Verso in 2016.How do I apply?
Details of how to apply for the 2025 award will be revealed in spring.
Portraits of the 2012–2018 award winners by Eccles Photography Fellow Ander McIntyre.
About the Eccles Centre
The Eccles Centre for American Studies was founded in 1991 to increase awareness and use of the British Library's extensive collections of books, manuscripts, journals, newspapers and sound recordings related to the United States, Canada and the Caribbean.
Housed within the British Library, the Centre works in collaboration with the Library's Americas curatorial team and external partners interested in the promotion of North American studies in the UK. The Centre runs a diverse events programme, funds research, offers training in the North American collections, and produces publications and digital exhibitions designed to introduce the quality and breadth of the collections.
