Ondaatje and Winifred Holtby Memorial Prizes

Ondaatje Prize

2025

Winner
Clear by Carys Davies

Shortlist
The Catchers by Xan Brooks
No Small Thing by Orlaine McDonald
American Anthem by Kelly Michels
Night Train to Odesa: Covering the Human Cost of Russia’s War by Jen Stout
Private Revolutions: Coming of Age in a New China by Yuan Yang

Longlist
Guest Privileges: Queer Lives and Finding Home in the Middle East by Gaar Adams
The Seers by Sulaiman Addonia
The Baton and the Cross: Russia's Church from Pagans to Putin by Lucy Ash
In Between by Maud Blair
The Wickedest by Caleb Femi
Whale Fall by Elizabeth O'Connor
Curandera by Irenosen Okojie
The Borrowed Hills by Scott Preston
Hard By A Great Forest by Leo Vardiashvili

2024

Winner
Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors by Ian Penman

Shortlist
Falling Animals by Sheila Armstrong
Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad
A Flat Place by Noreen Masud
Cuddy by Benjamin Myers
No Man’s Land by David Nash

Longlist
The Britannias: An Island Quest by Alice Albinia
Thunderclap: A Memoir of Art and Life and Sudden Death by Laura Cumming
Local Interest by Emily Hasler
Nothing Ever Just Disappears by Diarmuid Hester
In Search of Berlin by John Kampfner
Wandering Souls by Cecile Pin
Two Lights: Walking Through Landscapes of Loss and Life by James Roberts
Elowen by William Henry Searle

2023

Winner
Heritage Aesthetics by Anthony Anaxagorou

Shortlist
Scary Monsters by Michelle de Kretser
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka
England’s Green by Zaffar Kunial
Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris

Longlist
All Down Darkness Wide by Sean Hewitt
The Half-life of Snails by Philippa Holloway
The Social Distance Between Us by Darren McGarvey
A Sin of Omission by Marguerite Poland

2022

Winner
Free: Coming of Age at the End of History by Lea Ypi

Shortlist
The Manningtree Witches by AK Blakemore
Islands of Abandonment: Life in the Post-Human Landscape by Cal Flyn
Writing the Camp by Yousif M Qasmiyeh
Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain by Sathnam Sanghera
The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak

Longlist
Class of ‘37 by Hester Barron & Claire Langhamer
Fifty Sounds by Polly Barton
Careless by Kirsty Capes
The Good Girls: An Ordinary Killing by Sonia Faleiro
The Roles We Play by Sabba Khan
Corrigenda for Costafine Town by Jake Morris-Campbell
The Whistling by Rebecca Netley
Surviving Katyn: Stalin’s Polish Massacre and the Search for Truth by Jane Rogoyska
This One Sky Day by Leone Ross
China Room by Sunjeev Sahota
Iberia by Julian Sayarer
I Belong Here: A Journey Along the Backbone of Britain by Anita Sethi
Amnion by Stephanie Sy-Quia
C+nto & Othered Poems by Joelle Taylor

2021

Winner
The Butchers by Ruth Gilligan

Shortlist
This Lovely City by Louise Hare
Box Hill by Adam Mars-Jones
Magnolia 木蘭 by Nina Minya Powles
English Pastoral: An Inheritance by James Rebanks
Square Haunting: Five Women, Freedom and London Between the Wars by Francesca Wade

Longlist
Imperial Mud: The Fight for the Fens by James Boyce
Out of Thin Air by Michael Crawley
The Beauty and the Terror by Catherine Fletcher
Big Girl, Small Town by Michelle Gallen
Scenes of a Graphic Nature by Caroline O'Donoghue
Unofficial Britain by Gareth E Rees
The Mermaid of Black Conch by Monique Roffey

2020

Winner
A Portable Paradise by Roger Robinson

Shortlist
Surge by Jay Bernard
Small Days and Nights by Tishani Doshi
Underland by Robert Macfarlane
10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World by Elif Shafak
A Small Silence by Jumoke Verissimo

Longlist
When the Tree Falls by Jane Clarke
On Chapel Sands: My mother and other missing persons by Laura Cumming
Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann
Nightingale Point by Luan Goldie
Midnight in Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham
Surfacing by Kathleen Jamie
Arabs: A 3,000-Year History of Peoples, Tribes, and Empires by Tim Mackintosh-Smith
The Summer Isles by Philip Marsden
Nia by Robert Minhinnick
The Inside City by Anita Mir
Lanny by Max Porter
The Bells of Old Tokyo: Travels in Japanese Time by Anna Sherman

2019

Winner
The Wife’s Tale by Aida Edemariam

Shortlist
No Turning Back by Rania Abouzeid
Happiness by Aminatta Forna
Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss
The Crossway by Guy Stagg
Kings of the Yukon by Adam Weymouth

Longlist
Perfidious Albion by Sam Byers
Little by Edward Carey
Middle England by Jonathan Coe
Where the road runs out by Gaia Holmes
The Café de Move-on Blues by Christopher Hope
A Stranger’s Pose by Emmanuel Iduma
Mary Ann Sate, Imbecile by Alice Jolly
Arkady by Patrick Langley
A Line in the River by Jamal Mahjoub
Let Me Be Like Water by SK Perry
From A Low And Quiet Sea by Donal Ryan
The Dictionary of Animal Languages by Heidi Sopinka
The Valley at the Centre of Our World by Malachy Tallack
Wilding by Isabella Tree

Ondaatje Prize&Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize

Ondaatje Prize

2025

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Ondaatje Prize
&
Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize