The Eccles Centre at the British Library has opened submissions for the Eccles Centre & Hay Festival Writer’s Award 2020.
The £20,000 prize, now in its eighth year, is the only literary award to combine a substantial prize fund with a year-long residency at one of the world’s most prestigious libraries.
Open to authors of both fiction and non-fiction for a current writing project related to the Americas (North, Central and South America and the Caribbean), the Award provides sustained support for authors during the creative process through unique access to the British Library’s unrivalled Americas collections and curatorial expertise. Previous winners include Olivia Laing, Erica Wagner and Naomi Wood.
The 2013 winner, Andrea Wulf, will be speaking on the Eccles Centre Platform at Hay on 1 June about her latest work inspired by her research as an Awardee, The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt, The Graphic Novel.
On 3 June, the 2018 winner, Tessa McWatt, will speak at the British Library on how her residency inspired her debut novel: Shame On Me: An Anatomy of Race and Belonging, due to be published in 2019. Tickets can be booked online.
Earlier this year, the Eccles Centre announced a new partnership with Hay Festival for the Writer’s Award. The partnership builds on Hay Festival’s growing presence in Latin America and the increasingly international reach of the Award, which, for the first time in 2020, will welcome submissions in Spanish and languages indigenous to the Americas.
Submissions open on 1 June and will close on 16th September at 12.00 BST. The shortlist of applications will be announced in early November, with the winners announced later that month. For more information on eligibility and how to apply, visit bl.co.uk/writers-award.
Find out more here.