The Eccles Institute & Hay Festival Global Writer’s Award

An award granting £20,000 and year-long residency at the Library to two writers for a yet-to-be-published book relating to the Americas.

The Eccles Institute & Hay Festival Global Writer’s Award is a residency prize that grants up to £20,000 annually to two writers from the UK and Latin America for a yet-to-be-published book relating to the Americas.

Established in 2012, the annual award has seen 30 writers develop incredible work exploring a rich variety of themes relating to the Americas working in fiction, non-fiction, memoir and more.

Critically acclaimed books published with the support of the Writer’s Award include:

Naomi Wood – Mrs. Hemingway (2014)
Olivia Laing – The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone (2016)
Bob Stanley – Let’s Do It: The Birth of Pop (2022)
Rachel Hewitt – In Her Nature: How Women Break Boundaries in the Great Outdoors (2023)
Imaobong Umoren – Empire Without End: A New History of Britain and the Caribbean (2025).

Discover all previous winners and their work.

Submissions for the 2027 Eccles-Hay Festival Global Writer’s Award will be open from Friday 22 May – Monday 14 September 2026. Find out more about how to apply on this page.

Winners receive £20,000 and the potential to present at the Eccles Institute Platform at Hay Festival events in Wales, Mexico, Peru and Colombia, as well as the events programme at the Library, to promote their published work.

During their residency, winners will be able to embed themselves in the Library and take part in various activities aimed at supporting the development of their projects, including using our collection to research their project with the support of curators and reference specialists, contributing to our Researchers’ Lunches talk series, leading a writers’ workshop and reflecting on their experience in a British Library blog.

How to apply, eligibility and terms

How to apply

Submissions for the 2027 Eccles Institute & Hay Festival Global Writer’s Award will be open from Friday 22 May – Monday 14 September 2026..

Please submit your application on the Hay Festival Global website.

Prize deliverables and terms

The £20,000 award payment will be connected to the following key deliverables aimed to help support writer’s projects:

Winners must spend a minimum of 40 working days (not necessarily consecutively) at the British Library
Winners will contribute to the British Library’s Researchers’ Packed Lunch talk series and lead a writers’ workshop at the Library
Winners will write a 500-word blog about their experience using the British Library collection and participating in the Award.

Winners are responsible for any tax liabilities resulting from the Award, and for arranging and funding travel and accommodation associated with participating (no separate funding will be made available to cover travel, accommodation or living expenses).

The £20,000 prize will be awarded in four grants as below:

Winner announcement and intention to attend the British Library for a minimum of 40 days confirmed – £5,000
40 days attendance at the British Library completed – £5,000
Researchers’ Packed Lunch talk series and Writers’ Workshop delivered – £5,000
Final installation once all above requirements are met and a blog reflecting on Library collections completed – £5,000.

The Eccles Institute & Hay Festival Global Writer’s Award should be attributed in all published works resulting from the residency.

Eligibility and application criteria

Applications can be submitted in English or Spanish.

Applications need to show relevance of theme and use of the Americas collections.

Applicants must be able to demonstrate a commitment to publish from a trade (ie non-academic) UK and/or Spanish language publisher.

The winner must be able to commit to a minimum of 40 days at the British Library in London.

Applications must be received by the deadline.

Get in touch

If you have any questions about the Writer’s Award or the application process please email eccles-institute@bl.uk.

2026 winners and their books

Jacqueline Crooks’ project Out of Many is a hybrid work of auto-fiction and memoir, and a literary excavation of Caribbean fatherhood and identity. In her sharp delineation of four distinct presentations of Jamaican fatherhood, Jacqueline’s proposal challenges perceptions and inviting readers to reflect on the complexities of heritage, masculinity and intergenerational transmission.

Vanessa Londoño’s proposal for her book Through Arrival Waters explores the vast collection of imagined maps that once sought to locate the mythical South American city of Manoa – also known as El Dorado and reveals how, even as Indigenous peoples were brutally forced to convert to Catholicism, Europeans themselves were unknowingly converted to South American Indigenous mythologies, driven by their feverish obsession with gold.

Previous winners

2025 – Peter Brathwaite and Joseph Zárate

Peter Brathwaite won for a non-fiction exploration of identity, history and memory, through the lens of his Barbadian and British heritage, Not All of Me Will Die.

Joseph Zárate won for Todonace en el agua ymuere en ella, which takes inspiration from Zarate’s 90-day journey on foot and boat following the same route of Spanish conquistador, Francisco de Orellana, five centuries ago when he set out to ‘discover’ the Amazon River.

2024 – Hannah Lowe and Alia Trabucco Zerán

Hannah Lowe won for a lyrical, hybrid memoir, Moy: In Search of NelsaLowe, where she uses the intimate story of her Chinese Jamaican aunt as a device for exploring the history of the Chinese in Jamaica.

Alia 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 and Jarred McGinnis

Ayanna Lloyd Banwo won for Dark EyePlace 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 and Javier Montes

Philip Clark’s Sound and the City, which is due to be published in the Spring of 2027, offers 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 – Imaobong Umoren and Pola Oloixarac

Pola Oloixarac won for AtlasLiterario del Amazonas (Literary Atlas of the Amazon) – a work of creative non-fiction revealing the secret history of the Amazon.

Imaobong Umoren’s Empire Without End: A New History of Britain and the Caribbean, published by Penguin in 2025, is an expansive new history of the 400-year relationship between Britain and the Caribbean.

2020 – Chloe Aridjis and Daniel Saldaña París

Novelist and writer Chloe Aridjis won for her novel Reports from the Land of the Bats and writer and editor Daniel Saldaña París for his novel El baile y el incendio (Anagrama, 2021), publised in English as The Dance and the Fire (Charco Press, 2025).

2019 – Rachel Hewitt and Sara Taylor

Lecturer and author Rachel Hewitt’s novel In Her Nature was published in 2023 by Chatto & Windus.

Novelist and co-director and editor of creative-critical publisher Seam Editions, Sara Taylor.

Portrait by Clara Molden.

2018 – Stuart Evers and Tessa McWatt

Novelist and short story writer Stuart Evers for The Blind Light which was published by Picador in 2020.

Author, librettist and screenwriter Tessa McWatt’s book Shame on Me: An Anatomy of Race and Belonging was published by Scribe UK in 2019.

2017 – Hannah Kohler and Bob Stanley

Author Hannah Kohler for her project, Catspaw.

Musician, journalist, author, and film producer Bob Stanley’s book Lets Do It: The Birth of Pop was published by Faber & Faber in 2023.