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.
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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).
Submissions for the 2027 Eccles-Hay Festival Global Writer’s Award are now open until Monday 14 September 2026.
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
Prize deliberables 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.
Elegibility 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
They’ll be in good company. Previous winners include...
2026
Jacqueline Crooks and Vanessa Londoño are the current Writer’s Award holders. Crooks won for Out of Many, a hybrid work of auto-fiction and memoir, and a literary excavation of Caribbean fatherhood and identity. Londoño won for Through Arrival Waters, a compelling proposal for her book , which explores the vast collection of imagined maps that once sought to locate the mythical South American city of Manoa — also known as El Dorado —.
2025
Peter Brathwaite and Joseph Zárate won the Writer’s Award in 2025. Bratwaite 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. Zárate won for Todo nace en el agua y muere 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 won the Writer’s Award in 2024. 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.
Portraits of the 2012–2018 award winners by Eccles Photography Fellow Ander McIntyre.
About the Eccles Institute
The Eccles Institute for American Studies was founded to increase awareness and use of the British Library's extensive collections of books, manuscripts, journals, newspapers and sound recordings related to the Latin America, United States, Canada and the Caribbean.
Housed within the British Library, the Institute's curatorial, research and engagement experts build and preserve the Library's Americas collections and run a diverse programme of public events and support for creative, academic and community researches.
