Wainwright Prize winners announced

In the UK, the 2024 winners of the Wainwright Prize for nature and conservation writing have been announced.

The nature writing prize was awarded to Late Light: The Secret Wonders of a Disappearing World (Michael Malay, Manilla), which ‘combines natural history with memoir in the story of his journey as an Indonesian Australian making a new home for himself in England’.

The prize for writing on conservation went to Blue Machine: How the Ocean Shapes Our World (Helen Czerski, Penguin), ‘an exploration into how the oceans are vital in a multitude of ways to life on the rest of the planet’.

The prize for children’s writing on nature and conservation was awarded to Foxlight (Katya Balen, Bloomsbury Children’s), a story ‘celebrating the exploration of nature as twins venture into the ferocious wildlands in an attempt to find their mother’.

Established in 2013 and named after late author Alfred Wainwright, the annual Wainwright Prize aims ‘to showcase the growing genre of nature-writing in publishing and to celebrate and encourage exploration of the outdoors to all readers’, with each of the three categories awarded to works ‘which best reflects Wainwright’s core values and include a celebration of nature and our natural environment, or a warning of the dangers to it across the globe’.

Announced at an urban nature reserve in London, the 2024 winners share in a prize fund of £7500 (A$14,676). More information, including highly commended titles, is available on the prize website.

Category: Awards International news