Literary Awards

News

The 2026 Dayton Literary Peace Prize Finalists: Karen Russell, Ann Patchett, and More

The Dayton Literary Peace Prize has revealed its 2026 shortlists — Karen Russell, Gish Jen, Charlotte McConaghy in fiction; Eve Ewing, Jack Fairweather, Amanda Knox in nonfiction. Ann Patchett receives the Holbrooke Award.

News

The 2026 Lambda Awards: When Queer Literature Refuses to Be Quiet

The 2026 Lambda Literary Awards celebrated both new and veteran voices in LGBTQ+ literature. From Lidia Yuknavitch to Milo Todd, the ceremony at Sony Hall in New York was a reminder that this literature has never stopped growing.

News

Two Books, Two Prizes, One Certainty: The Women's Prize 2026 Goes to Virginia Evans and Lyse Doucet

The Women's Prize 2026 has crowned Virginia Evans in fiction and Lyse Doucet in nonfiction. Two very different books, one shared conviction: women's writing doesn't need justification — it needs to be read.

Authors

Nobody Believed in Julian Barnes. The Princess of Asturias Prize Begs to Differ.

Julian Barnes wins the 2026 Princess of Asturias Prize for Literature — a long-overdue recognition of one of British fiction's most precise and quietly devastating voices, four decades in the making.

Reviews

A Machine Walks into Granta: The Commonwealth Prize and the Question No One Wants to Answer

A story published in Granta as a Commonwealth Foundation regional finalist was almost certainly written by AI. The institution is reviewing its process. Perhaps it should also review its assumptions.

Authors

Spanish Noir Has a New Champion: Lorenzo Silva Wins the Inaugural Premio Domingo Villar

Some prizes arrive at exactly the right moment. The Semana Negra festival in Gijón has found the first natural guardian for its new distinction: Lorenzo Silva, master of Spanish noir fiction.

News

Ali Smith Wins the 2026 Dublin Literary Award for Gliff

Scottish author Ali Smith has won the €100,000 Dublin Literary Award for Gliff, a novel about two abandoned siblings surviving at the world's edges. A prize that feels overdue for one of literature's most formally daring voices.

News

Seven Writers Who Won't Fit Neatly on a Shelf: The 2026 DAG Prize Finalists

The DAG Foundation has named seven finalists for its $20,000 prize recognising early-career prose writers who expand the possibilities of American writing. The shortlist is, to put it mildly, not a safe one.

Awards

The 2026 Orwell Prizes: Fiction That Cannot Look Away

The 2026 Orwell Prize finalists for Political Fiction include Douglas Stuart, Ben Lerner, Susan Choi, and five more. When was the last time a novel felt genuinely urgent?

Reviews

Three Awards, No Acceptance Speech: Virginia Giuffre Wins Book of the Year

Virginia Roberts Giuffre's posthumous memoir Nobody's Girl swept the British Book Awards, winning Book of the Year, Nonfiction Narrative, and the Freedom to Publish Award. She died in April 2025, aged 41.

News

Who Reads for the Children's Booker? Actual Children.

The new Children's Booker Prize has named its judges—including three child jurors aged 8-12 who will actually vote for the winner. A £50,000 prize decided in part by its own intended audience.

News

Daniel Kraus Wins the 2026 Pulitzer for Fiction: Genre's Finest Hour

Daniel Kraus wins the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction with Angel Down. Yiyun Li takes the memoir prize for Things in Nature Merely Grow. A year of unexpected choices.