Wales Book of the Year

Overview

Wales Book of the Year is an annual literary award celebrating writing from Wales in both English and Welsh (Literature Wales). It is administered by Literature Wales, the national literature development charity, which has run the award since 2004 — although reporting traces the award in some form back to the 1960s (InYourArea). There are twelve awards in total: four categories in each language — Poetry, Fiction, Creative Non-fiction and Children & Young People — plus one People’s Choice and one overall winner per language, with a collective prize fund of £14,000 (Literature Wales). Literature Wales describes the prize as an invaluable platform for both emerging and established writers, and as part of its aim of celebrating and representing Wales’s writers, heritage and literary culture (Literature Wales).

How the award works

Each category winner receives £1,000; one category winner in each language then takes the overall title — Wales Book of the Year in English, Llyfr y Flwyddyn in Welsh — earning a further £3,000 (Literature Wales). Overall winners also receive trophies designed and created by Welsh sculptor, artist and blacksmith Angharad Pearce Jones (wales.com).

A judging panel is appointed each year to read, debate and select the winners. The 2025 English-language panel comprised Eloise Williams, Ned Thomas, Carole Burns and Jason Camilleri, and the Welsh-language panel Menna Elfyn, Gwenllian Ellis, Dr Miriam Elin Jones and Hammad Rind (Literature Wales). Shortlists are announced in the spring — the 2025 shortlists were revealed on BBC Radio Wales and BBC Radio Cymru on 11 May 2025 — with the winners named at a summer ceremony (Literature Wales).

The awards carry named sponsors: Cardiff University’s School of English, Communication and Philosophy sponsors the overall English-language prize and its School of Welsh the Welsh-language prize; the Rhys Davies Trust supports the English-language Fiction award; and the public vote is sponsored by Nation.Cymru in English and by Golwg360, as the Barn y Bobl prize, in Welsh (Literature Wales).

2026 winners

The 2026 winners were announced on 9 July 2026 at a ceremony held at Galeri, Caernarfon (Literature Wales). Anthony Shapland’s debut novel A Room Above a Shop (Granta) won the English-language Fiction award and the overall title; speaking for the judging panel, Catrin Kean called it “a gorgeous work of art” with “tender, precise, poetic prose” and said the decision was unanimous (Literature Wales). The novel is a love story set against the backdrop of the AIDS epidemic and Clause 28, centred on two men living a secret life in lodgings in South Wales (Literature Wales). Shapland grew up in Bargoed in south Wales, founded the artist-led space g39 in Cardiff, and was mentored by Cynan Jones through Literature Wales’s Representing Wales programme (Literature Wales).

In the Welsh-language strand, Mererid Hopwood’s poetry collection Mae (Cyhoeddiadau Barddas) took the overall prize — the first poetry collection to win the overall Welsh-language award since 2002 (Literature Wales). Hopwood is the first woman to win the Eisteddfod Chair, the highest accolade for poetry composed in cynghanedd, and is Professor of Welsh and Celtic Studies at Aberystwyth University (Literature Wales). The remaining 2026 category winners were Laura Wainwright’s The Storm’s Flora (English poetry), Joe Dunthorne’s Children of Radium: A Buried Inheritance (English creative non-fiction), Olivia Wakeford’s My Dog (English children & young people), Sonia Edwards’s Tri (Welsh fiction), Iestyn Tyne’s Y Cyfan a Fu Rhyngom Ni (Welsh creative non-fiction) and Manon Steffan Ros’s Y Cae Ras (Welsh children & young people), with the People’s Choice awards going to Gosia Buzzanca’s There she Goes my Beautiful World in English and Carwyn Eckley’s Trochi in Welsh (Literature Wales).

Recent years

Carys Davies’s novel Clear (Granta) won the overall English-language prize in 2025, with Iola Ynyr’s Camu (Y Lolfa) taking the Welsh-language overall title; the winners were revealed at Sherman Theatre, Cardiff, on 17 July 2025 (InYourArea). Rhian Elizabeth’s Girls etc. took both the English Poetry award and the People’s Choice award that year, while Gwyneth Lewis won the Creative Non-Fiction award for Nightshade Mother: A Disentangling (InYourArea).

In 2021 the Welsh-language overall prize went to Cardiff University student Megan Angharad Hunter for her debut novel tu ôl i’r awyr (Y Lolfa), announced on BBC Radio Cymru on 4 August 2021; she received £4,000 in total and had earlier received a Literature Wales New Writer’s Bursary to work on the book (Cardiff University). Trade-press reporting recorded Robert Minhinnick winning the award a third time for a poetry collection from independent press Carcanet — 25 years after first scooping the prize — when the overall prize stood at £4,000 (The Bookseller).

What this profile does not claim

This profile does not give a founding year for the award: a 1992 date appears only in book-aggregator listings and tertiary mirrors, which are not citable sources, so the history here starts with Literature Wales’s administration from 2004. It does not trace prize amounts before 2018 from citable sources, and it describes judging only through published panel statements. It does not predict the 2027 shortlist or winners; submissions for the 2027 award close on 24 November 2026, per Literature Wales (Literature Wales).