Published on 02/07/2026 – 21:52 GMT+2•Updated 22:06 A year after being chosen to deliver the speech on Portugal Day, Portuguese writer Lídia Jorge, one of the country’s leading contemporary literary figures, has received the highest distinction awarded to authors writing in Portuguese, the Camões Prize. Jorge thus succeeds the Angolan poet Ana Paula Tavares, who…
A story widely accused on social media of being written using AI has gone on to win the overall Commonwealth short story prize. Jamir Nazir’s story The Serpent in the Grove went viral after being named as a regional winner in mid-May, with critics on X and Bluesky claiming it showed “obvious markers” of AI…
The Ursula K. Le Guin Foundation has announced the shortlist for the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction, which annually awards $25,000 to the author of a book who best represents the legendary writer’s literary, moral, and aesthetic ideals: “realists of a larger reality, who can imagine real grounds for hope and see alternatives…
American writer Ben Lerner has won this year’s Orwell prize for political fiction for Transcription, a novel exploring technology and memory. In nonfiction, the prize went to Karen Bartlett for The Escape from Kabul, which looks at Afghan women lawyers who came under threat after the fall of Kabul in 2021. The prizes, which aim…
Today, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation, which celebrates “writers whose work demonstrates the power of the written word to foster peace,” announced the finalists for its 2026 Dayton Literary Peace Prize (for books published in 2025). The winners will each receive a $10,000 cash award, and the first runners-up will take home $5,000. The…
Just as I am about to interview this year’s Women’s prize winner, debut American novelist Virginia Evans, at the party on a drizzly evening in a leafy London square, we are interrupted because someone wants to congratulate her. The fan is Richard Curtis. A warm-hearted weepy with a sprinkling of gentle humour, Evans’s prize-winning novel…
Lyse Doucet first checked into Kabul’s Intercontinental Hotel on Christmas Day 1988, as Soviet troops were withdrawing from Afghanistan at the end of a decade-long occupation. She expected to stay briefly. Instead, she remained for almost a year, and the hotel became her first Afghan home. More than three decades later, it became the subject…
Today, at a ceremony in Toronto, the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, which awards $150,000 annually to women and non-binary writers with books published in Canada and the US, announced its 2026 winner: Julia Elliott’s short story collection Hellions (Tin House Books). This year’s jury was comprised of Carmen Maria Machado (Chair), Ivan Coyote, Cherie…
The 4thWrite prize, an annual short story competition for Black, Asian and minority ethnic writers run by publisher 4th Estate and the Guardian, has opened for submissions. The winner will receive £1,000, a one-day publishing workshop at 4th Estate and publication of their story on the Guardian website. The shortlisted stories will be published on…
The world’s best tennis players are not pleased with their share of the Grand Slam pie. Some are now suggesting a boycott of future tournaments if it’s not increased. World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka floated the idea on Tuesday at a news conference before the Italian Open, the final warmup to the French Open that’s…
