COMING MARCH 2024

 

 

The Writers’ Prize

 

Fiction, Non-Fiction, Poetry – nominated and judged exclusively by the Folio Academy

Shortlist Announcement: 9th January 2024 

 

2023 Rathbones Folio Prize Book of the Year: Constructing a Nervous System by Margo Jefferson

 

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2023 CATEGORY WINNERS

NON-FICTION

Constructing a Nervous System By Margo Jefferson

Tessa Hadley

FICTION

SCARY MONSTERS BY MICHELLE DE KRETSER

POETRY

QUIET BY VICTORIA ADUKWEI BULLEY

Book cover of Quiet, by Victoria Adukwei Bulley

The Judges said:

Life as a living art. A joyous, moving and inventive read.

The Judges said:

A sublime novel that slips, fascinates and terrifies at once. De Kretser’s Scary Monsters deserves to be read again and again.

The Judges said:

Impresses with its strength and power, its ingenious investigation of inner life, the tensions and surprises within. The book’s quiet balance shook us to the core.

The 2023 Shortlisted Books

Non-Fiction

The Passengers

by Will Ashon

In Love

by Amy Bloom

The Escape Artist

by Jonathan Freedland

Constructing a Nervous System

by Margo Jefferson

The Social Distance Between Us

by Darren McGarvey

Fiction

Glory

by NoViolet Bulawayo

Scary Monsters

by Michelle de Kretser

Pure Colour

by Sheila Heti

Emergency

by Daisy Hildyard

Lucy by the Sea

by Elizabeth Strout

Poetry

Quiet

by Victoria Adukwei Bulley

Ephemeron

by Fiona Benson

Cane, Corn & Gully

by Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa

England’s Green

by Zaffar Kunial

Manorism

by Yomi Ṣode

ABOUT US

Rathbones Folio Prize 2022

More than Just a Prize: the Literature Prize Foundation

 

Our activities don’t stop with the Prize. Our ground-breaking mentorship scheme, run in partnership with First Story,  has worked with dozens of emerging writers from disadvantaged communities since its inception in 2017.

Furthermore, our partnership with UEA allows a Rathbones Folio Prize-winning or shortlisted author to take up a Visiting Fellowship each year; the current fellow is Sunjeev Sahota, shortlisted in 2022 for his novel China Room.

Current Projects

We are working with spinal injuries charity Horatio’s Garden on a writing for wellbeing scheme, while our partnership with the University of Chichester’s Ukrainian Digital Writer in Residence gives a voice in English to eminent Ukrainian author Volodymyr Rafeienko.

 

Support Us

As a registered UK charity, we believe that literature has the capacity to fundamentally change and enrich people’s lives. If, like us, you believe that great literature matters, please consider supporting our work by clicking here. 

Raymond Antrobus, Winner of the Rathbones Folio Prize 2019

The Prize

 

First awarded in 2014, the Rathbones Folio Prize  – also known as The Writers’ Prize – is open to all works of literature written in English and published in the UK, and is worth over £30,000. All genres and all forms of literature are eligible, except work written primarily for children.

 

The Prize is unique in that it is judged by members of the 300-strong Rathbones Folio Academy of esteemed writers and critics.

 

Prize winners to date are: Tenth of December by George Saunders (2014); Family Life by Akhil Sharma (2015); The Return by Hisham Matar (2017); Ghosts of the Tsunami by Richard Lloyd Parry (2018); The Perseverance by Raymond Antrobus (2019, pictured above); Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli (2020);  In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado (2021); The Magician by Colm Tóibín (2022); and Constructing a Nervous System by Margo Jefferson (2023).