The Eccles Institute & Hay Festival Global Writer's Award
The Eccles Institute & Hay Festival Global Writer’s Award is a residency award that grants up to £20,000 annually to two writers for a yet-to-be-published book relating to the Americas. The prize also grants up to a year-long residency at the British Library and access to curatorial expertise within the Library's world-class Americas collections. Applications are open and winners will be announced in November.
Now in its fifteenth year, the Award grants up to £20,000 annually to two writers – of fiction and/or non-fiction - for a yet-to-be-published book relating to the Americas (North, Central and South America and the Caribbean).
Applicants are expected to use the residency to make extensive use of the British Library’ Americas collections and curatorial support, spending a minimum of 40 days at the Library for their project (the days do not need to be consecutive).
A number of critically acclaimed books have been published with the support of the Eccles Institute and Hay Festival Global Writer’s Award including Bob Stanley’s Let’s Do It: The Birth of Pop, Olivia Laing’s The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone, Naomi Wood’s Mrs. Hemingway and The Invention of Nature: The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt, and the Lost Hero of Science by Andrea Wulf.
The 2025 Award holders are Joseph Zárate and Peter Brathwaite, who are working with the Eccles Institute and British Library curators to develop their forthcoming books, Todo nace en el agua y muere en ella and Not All of Me Will Die. They will be participating in events at the British Library in 2025 and beyond.
Submissions for the 2026 Eccles Institute & Hay Festival Global Writer’s Award are open and will be closed on 12 September 2025. The shortlist announcement will take place in early November and the winners will be announced at the end of November 2025.
Further details
Subject to fulfilling Award deliverables (see below), winners will receive £20,000 in four grants 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 British Library, to promote their published work.
The Award payment schedule will be connected to key deliverables aimed to help support writer’s projects. Winners are expected to spend a minimum of 40 working days (not necessarily consecutively) at the British Library. During this time, they will be required to contribute to the Library’s Researcher Lunch series and lead a writer’s workshop at the British Library. They will additionally be expect to write a 500-word blog about using Library collections. The Eccles-Hay Writer’s Award should be attributed in all published works resulting from the residency. Winners are responsible for arranging and funding travel and accommodation and for any tax liabilities resulting from the Award.
What's the prize?
Two winners will hold the Writer’s Award for one year from 1 January 2026, and will receive
Unique access to the expertise of the British Library’s curatorial staff
The chance to appear at future Hay Festival Global editions with their published work.
£20,000, in four -grants as follows:
Winner announcement November 2025 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
Researcher Lunch and Writer’s Workshop delivered - £5,000
Final installation once all above requirements and a blog reflecting on Library collections completed - £5,000
The British Library is continuing to experience a major technology outage as a result of a cyber-attack. A searchable online version of the Library's main catalogue, which contains the majority of its printed collections, is available but not everything is included. See: https://www.bl.uk/research/
At present it is not possible to search the manuscript, sound or newspaper catalogues online. If you have a query about manuscript, sound or newspaper collections please send an enquiry to: https://bl.libanswers.com/form?queue_id=2304
If you have any other questions please email [email protected].
They’ll be in good company. Previous winners include...
are the current Writer's Award holders
Peter Brathwaite and Joseph Zárate are the current Writer’s Award holders. 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.How do I apply?
Details of how to apply for the 2025 award will be revealed in spring.
Portraits of the 2012–2018 award winners by Eccles Photography Fellow Ander McIntyre.
About the Eccles Centre
The Eccles Centre for American Studies was founded in 1991 to increase awareness and use of the British Library's extensive collections of books, manuscripts, journals, newspapers and sound recordings related to the United States, Canada and the Caribbean.
Housed within the British Library, the Centre works in collaboration with the Library's Americas curatorial team and external partners interested in the promotion of North American studies in the UK. The Centre runs a diverse events programme, funds research, offers training in the North American collections, and produces publications and digital exhibitions designed to introduce the quality and breadth of the collections.
