Authors Jacqueline Crooks and Vanessa Londoño were announced as the 2026 winners of the Eccles Institute and Hay Festival Global Writer’s Award, in a reception at the British Library last night (Monday 24 November).
25 November 2025
Crooks and Londoño are each awarded £20,000 and up to a year’s writing residency at the British Library to develop their forthcoming books using the Library’s Americas collections, as well as the opportunity to showcase their finished work at Hay Festival events in the UK and Latin America.
They were selected from a shortlist of six writers from Europe, North and South America. Including both fiction and non-fiction, the 2026 shortlist covered a diverse array of subjects relating to the Americas including diasporic identity, indigenous mythologies, gender and race.
Now in its 15th year, the Writer's Award is given annually to two writers in the early stages of a new book relating to the Americas. Along with the £20,000 grant, the winners also receive a residency at the British Library, 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.
The judging panel for this year’s Award comprised of Catherine Eccles (Eccles Fisher Associates Director and Chair of Judges), Polly Russell (Head of the Eccles Institute for the Americas and Oceania), Cristina Fuentes La Roche (International Director of Hay Festival), Colin Grant (Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Director of WritersMosaic), and Mercedes Aguirre (Deputy Head of the Eccles Institute for the Americas and Oceania).
Head of the Eccles Institute for the Americas and Oceania at the British Library Polly Russell said 'We are delighted to support Jacqueline Crooks and Vanessa Londoño as the winners of the 2026 Eccles-Hay Writer's Award. Both their submissions explore and uncover important aspects of Caribbean and South American indigenous cultures and histories, with Londoño’s work focused on indigenous experience and mythologies and Crook’s project delving into Caribbean fatherhood and identity. We look forwarding to hosting them at the Library next year where they will be able to explore our rich collection.'
Hay Festival International Director Cristina Fuentes La Roche said 'An astonishing shortlist made this year’s judging a tough task. Our 2026 Eccles Institute & Hay Festival Writer’s Award winners offer contrasting perspectives on the Americas that celebrate and interrogate the continents in exciting ways. I am looking forward to seeing each of these projects develop in the coming years – it is an honour to support and share their work through this platform.'
Submissions for the 2027 Writer's Award will open next summer.
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Raised in Southall within Britain's vibrant Windrush Generation community, Jacqueline Crooks’ fiction work is rooted in diasporic identity, subculture and mythic memory. Her debut novel, Fire Rush, won the 2024 PEN America Open Book Award and the Society of Authors' Paul Torday Prize. Crooks was named me one of the 10 best new novelists of 2023, and The New Yorker selected Fire Rush as one of the year’s best novels. Her new novel, Sky City, will be published by Jonathan Cape in August 2026. Alongside her writing, she is an experienced workshop leader working with socially excluded communities, including older people, refugees, asylum seekers, and disadvantaged children.
Writer Vanessa Londoño was a finalist at the 2022 National Published Novel Award from the Colombian Ministry of Culture. In 2017, she was the recipient of the Aura Estrada Literature Award at the Oaxaca Book Fair, and the Nuevas Plumas Journalistic Chronicle Award at the Guadalajara Book Fair. Her work has been published in various outlets, including El Faro (El Salvador), Americas Quarterly (Nueva York), El Malpensante (Colombia), Revista Brando (Argentina) and Este País (Mexico).
Her first novel, El asedio animal (The Liminal Siege), was published internationally.
The Eccles Institute for the Americas and Oceania at the British Library and Hay Festival Global are working together to facilitate and inspire a new wave of world-class fiction and non-fiction storytelling in the UK and across the Americas. Beginning in 2020, this partnership supports writers in the creative stages of a new project through a £20,000 prize and a year-long residency at the British Library, granting up-close access to the Americas collections as well as curatorial expertise. Winners will have the opportunity to share their published work at the British Library and with international audiences at Hay Festivals worldwide. The Award is open to submissions for writing projects of both fiction and non-fiction relating to North, Central, South America and the Caribbean, and due for publication in English, Spanish or any language Indigenous to the Americas.
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Hay Festival Global is a charity providing global festivals of stories, ideas, and new possibilities. The antidote to polarisation, Hay Festival brings together diverse voices to listen, talk, debate, and create, tackling some of the biggest political, social and environmental challenges of our time. Through one-of-a-kind festivals, in unique locations around the world – plus forums, digital platforms and learning programmes – Hay Festival celebrates and inspires different views, perspectives, and points of view.
In 1987, Hay Festival was dreamt up in the booktown of Hay-on-Wye, Wales. Thirty-nine years later, the charity runs events and projects all over the world, from the historic town of Cartagena in Colombia to the heart of cities in Peru, Mexico, Spain and the USA.
Hay Festival reaches a global audience of millions each year and continues to grow and innovate, earning multiple awards over the years, including Festival of Sanctuary status from refugee charity City of Sanctuary UK and, in 2020, Spain’s Princess of Asturias Award in Communication and Humanities.