Congratulations to Liz Berry, author of ‘The Home Child’
The Writers’ Prize Book of the Year 2024
On accepting the £32,000 Prize from former Rathbones Folio Prize winner Hisham Matar, Liz said:
“When I was writing The Home Child, I liked to imagine that I was reaching back through time – to be able to hold the children in the story very tenderly, as tenderly as I might hold my own sons.
Every day children cross our borders, and children fall through gaps in systems which are so underfunded. We’ve got to do our best, as writers and readers and humans, to welcome them, and protect them, and fight for their rights. Because if poetry and books teach us anything – it’s that everyone’s life is precious and everyone’s children are our children.”
Fiction Category Winner
Non-Fiction Category Winner
Fiction
CATEGORY WINNER: The Wren, The Wren by Anne Enright
The Bee Sting by Paul Murray
The Fraud by Zadie Smith
Non-Fiction
CATEGORY WINNER: Thunderclap by Laura Cumming
Doppelganger by Naomi Klein
A Thread of Violence by Mark O’Connell
Poetry
Self-Portrait as Othello by Jason Allen-Paisant
CATEGORY WINNER / BOOK OF THE YEAR: The Home Child by Liz Berry
Bright Fear by Mary Jean Chan
Shortlisted for The Writers’ Prize 2024
The Folio Academy judges The Writers’ Prize. The Category Winners and the overall Book of the Year were announced at London Book Fair on 13th March 2024.