Writer’s Award 2024 goes to Hannah Lowe and Alia Trabucco Zerán
Authors Hannah Lowe and Alia Trabucco Zerán were announced as the 2024 winners of the Eccles Centre & Hay Festival Writer’s Award, in a reception at the British Library last night (Wednesday 29 November).
Lowe and Zerán 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 six-strong shortlist of writers hailing from Europe, North and South America. Including both fiction and non-fiction, the 2024 shortlist covered a diverse array of subjects relating to the Americas including migration, gendered labour, folk healing, and revolution.
Now in its 13th 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 Centre to develop and facilitate activities and events related to their research at the British Library.
The 2024 judging panel comprised Eccles Fisher Associates Director Catherine Eccles, Hay Festival International Director Cristina Fuentes La Roche, Head of the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library Polly Russell, WritersMosaic Director Colin Grant and Lucy Rowlands, interim Lead Curator for American Collections at the British Library.
Head of the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library, Polly Russell, said: ‘We could not be more excited to support Hannah Lowe and Alia Trabucco as the 2024 Eccles-Hay Writer’s Award winners. Both their projects – one focussed on the Chinese population of the Caribbean and the other on Latin American identity– promise to explore untapped British Library Americas collections and to uncover aspects of Latin American and Caribbean culture and history that have been much overlooked. We look forward to welcoming them to the Library and supporting their work as they delve into the Library’s rich holdings.’
Hay Festival International Director, Cristina Fuentes La Roche, said: ‘We are delighted to award the grants to two writers that explore shifting identities, belonging and its meanings on today´s world, and that would link up their literary project with the work of amazing writers and researchers from the British Library archives.
Alia Trabucco’s project, about identity, specifically that of women, will connect the literary work of a writer who is already one of Latin America more exciting voices with the quest to explore identities by writers and artists such as Frida Kahlo. Hannah Lowe´s looks into the past, more specifically her own family, exploring race, colonial complexities and the legacy of the British Empire. We can´t wait to learn about their explorations and findings at the archives.’
Submissions for the 2024 Writer’s Award will open next summer.
Notes to editor
Please contact press@bl.uk for interview requests and images.
About the winners: Hannah Lowe
Hannah Lowe’s lyrical, hybrid memoir, Moy: In Search of Nelsa Lowe, uses the intimate story of her Chinese Jamaican aunt - a folk healer, amputee, hostess of a famous waterfront restaurant, and ‘madam’ of a portside brothel - as a device for exploring the history of the Chinese in Jamaica, women’s sexual labour, and the culture of folk healing.
The judges were “enthralled by Hannah Lowe’s inventive approach to conjuring Nelsa, her Afro-Chinese Jamaican aunt. Remarkably, Lowe evokes Nelsa through a single portrait photo and along the way excavates other marginalised women whoselives are rarely noted in official archives.”
About Alia Trabucco Zerán
Combining a thriller at its core with the diary of a female academic obsessively writing a book about the face following a prosthetic procedure, Impudence (Descado) by Alia Trabucco Zerán weaves fiction with memoir and essay to explore portrayals of Latin American women and our relationship with the female face, identity and loss. The judges said: “We were inspired by what promises to be an original and radical mix of fiction, autobiography and essay and a piece of writing which asks the question: how does our face inform who we are?”
About the Eccles Centre & Hay Festival Writer’s Award
The Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library and Hay Festival 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.
About the British Library
We are the national library of the UK and we are here for everyone. Our shelves hold over 170 million items – a living collection that gets bigger every day. Although our roots extend back centuries, we aim to collect everything published in the UK today, tomorrow and far into the future. Our trusted experts care for this collection and open it up for everyone to spark new discoveries, ideas and to help people do incredible things.
We have millions of books, and much more besides. Our London and Yorkshire sites hold collections ranging from newspapers and maps to sound recordings, patents, academic journals, as well as a copy of every UK domain website and blog. Our public spaces are a place to research, to meet friends, to start up a new business or simply to get inspired by visiting our galleries and events. We work with partners and libraries across the UK and the world to make sure that as many people as possible have the chance to use and explore our collections, events and expertise. And we’re always open online, along with more and more of our digitised collection.
About Hay Festival
Hay Festival is a mission-led charity that brings readers and writers together to share stories and ideas in sustainable events live and online. The Festivals inspire, examine and entertain globally, inviting participants to imagine the world as it is and as it might be.
Nobel Prizewinners and novelists, scientists and politicians, historians, environmentalists and musicians take part in the Festival’s global conversation, sharing the latest thinking in the arts and sciences with curious audiences. A wide programme of education and outreach work runs alongside all of the Festival’s events, supporting coming generations of writers and culturally hungry audiences.
In 1987, the Festival was dreamt up around a kitchen table in the booktown of Hay-on-Wye, Wales. Thirty-five years later, the unique marriage of exacting conversations and entertainment for all ages has travelled to editions in 30 locations, from the historic town of Cartagena in Colombia to the heart of cities in Peru, Mexico, Spain and Croatia. The organisation now reaches a global audience of millions each year and continues to grow and innovate, building partnerships and initiatives alongside some of the leading bodies in arts and the media. Hay Festival was awarded Spain’s Princess of Asturias Award in Communication and Humanities in 2020.