Jacqueline Crooks wins 2026 Eccles Institute and Hay Festival Global Writer’s Award
We’re thrilled to share that Jacqueline Crooks has won the 2026 Eccles Institute and Hay Festival Global Writer’s Award.
In a reception at the British Library on Monday 24 November, Crooks was announced as one of the two winners of the award – she jointly won with author, Vanessa Londoño. Now in its 15th year, the Writer’s Award is given annually to two writers in the early stages of a new book relating to the Americas.
Both authors were awarded £20,000, the opportunity to work with the Eccles Institute to develop and facilitate activities and events related to their research, up to a year’s writing residency at the British Library to develop their forthcoming books using the Library’s Americas collections, as well as the opportunity to showcase their finished work at Hay Festival events in the UK and Latin America.
They were selected from a shortlist of six writers from Europe, North and South America. Including fiction and non-fiction, the 2026 shortlist covered a diverse array of subjects relating to the Americas including diasporic identity, indigenous mythologies, gender and race.
The judging panel for this year’s Award comprised of Catherine Eccles (Eccles Fisher Associates Director and Chair of Judges), Polly Russell (Head of the Eccles Institute for the Americas and Oceania), Cristina Fuentes La Roche (International Director of Hay Festival), Colin Grant (Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Director of WritersMosaic), and Mercedes Aguirre (Deputy Head of the Eccles Institute for the Americas and Oceania).
Head of the Eccles Institute for the Americas and Oceania at the British Library Polly Russell said: “We are delighted to support Jacqueline Crooks and Vanessa Londoño as the winners of the 2026 Eccles-Hay Writer’s Award. Both their submissions explore and uncover important aspects of Caribbean and South American indigenous cultures and histories, with Londoño’s work focused on indigenous experience and mythologies and Crook’s project delving into Caribbean fatherhood and identity. We look forwarding to hosting them at the Library next year where they will be able to explore our rich collection.”
For more, read here.