Wales Book of the Year

An annual Welsh literary award administered by Literature Wales, given in parallel English- and Welsh-language categories including fiction, poetry and creative non-fiction.

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Location

Wales, United Kingdom

Country

United Kingdom

Administered by

Literature Walesstated by the subject

2026 English-language fiction winner

"A Room Above a Shop" by Anthony Shapland (Granta)

2026 Welsh-language fiction winner

"Tri" by Sonia Edwards (Gwasg y Bwthyn)

Overview

Wales Book of the Year is an annual Welsh literary award administered by Literature Wales, presented in parallel English-language and Welsh-language categories covering fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, and children’s and young people’s writing.

2026 winners

Literature Wales announced the 2026 winners on 9 July 2026. The English-language fiction award went to Anthony Shapland’s debut novel “A Room Above a Shop” (Granta), recognised for its “tender, precise, poetic prose,” a result independently reported by the Welsh news website Nation.Cymru (Nation.Cymru). Other 2026 category winners named on Literature Wales’s own award page include Laura Wainwright’s “The Storm’s Flora” (poetry), Joe Dunthorne’s “Children of Radium: A Buried Inheritance” (creative non-fiction), and, in the Welsh-language categories, Sonia Edwards’s “Tri” (fiction) and Mererid Hopwood’s “Mae” (poetry) (Literature Wales).

What this profile does not claim

This profile does not state the award’s founding year, its full history, judging panel composition, or prize money, since a source confirming those details was not fetched and read in full for this profile. It is limited to the confirmed 2026 winners.

Timeline

What we could not verify

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Sources

2 sources (1 tier 2, 1 first-party), each opened and read against the claim it supports. Statements the subject makes about itself are marked as such and are not treated as independent evidence. See the source policy.

The full 2026 winners list across both English- and Welsh-language categories is drawn from Literature Wales's own award page. The headline fiction result is independently corroborated by Nation.Cymru, a Welsh current-affairs news website, both fetched and read in full.