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Home > Awards & prizes > RSL Giles St Aubyn Awards for Non-Fiction

RSL Giles St Aubyn Awards for Non-Fiction

The Royal Society of Literature has established annual awards for first-time writers of non-fiction – in perpetuity – because of a generous bequest from author and RSL Fellow Giles St Aubyn. Giles St Aubyn, who died in 2015 aged 89, wrote 14 non-fiction books and taught history for nearly 40 years at Eton College. A nephew of Vita Sackville-West, he counted John Betjeman, John le Carré and The Queen Mother among his friends. Read the press release announcing the Awards.

The new awards build on the RSL Jerwood Awards. a previous form of non-fiction awards, generously supported by Jerwood Charitable Foundation from 2004 to 2016.


The 2020 Awards

We are now open for submissions for the fourth year of the RSL Giles St Aubyn Awards for first-commissioned works of non-fiction.

This year, we are pleased to announce that three awards will be presented: one of £10,000, one of £5,000, and one of £2,500 – to provide financial support for talented new writers to complete their first book of non-fiction for a mainstream audience, especially by buying them time for writing or research. Winners will be announced at a reception in London in October 2020.

This year’s judges are: Damian Le Bas, Ramita Navai and Fiona St Aubyn.

Please download the application form for full details of how to enter.

Please note that, due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, we are currently unable to accept postal entries. Please send all entries by email only.

Closing date for submissions: Friday 31 July 2020, 5pm.


The 2019 Awards

The 2019 Award-winners were:

  • £10,000 – Harry Davies – Operation Information (The Bodley Head, 2021)
  • £5,000 – Olive Heffernan – The High Seas: The Race to Save the Earth’s Last Wilderness (Profile Books, 2021)
  • Judges’ Special Commendation – awarded to Rebecca Fogg for Beautiful Trauma (Granta, 2022)

The 2019 judges were Fiona St Aubyn (Chair), Rachel Hewitt and Kenan Malik. The Awards were presented on Thursday 28 November 2018 at John Murray House. Read the press release for more information.

 

The 2018 Awards

We 2019 awards were:

  • £10,000 – Laurence Blair – Lost Countries of South America: Travels in a Continent’s Past and Present(The Bodley Head, 2020)
  • £5,000 – Lily Le Brun– Looking to Sea: Britain Through the Eyes of its Artists (Hodder and Stoughton, 2020)
  • Judges’ Special Commendation – awarded to Paul Craddock for his work in progress Dragon in a Suitcase: A Cultural History of the Art of Transplant (Fig Tree, 2020)

The 2018 judges were: Iain Sinclair (Chair), Laura Bates, Aida Edemariam and Fiona St Aubyn. The Awards were presented on Wednesday 28 November 2018 at John Murray House. Read the press release for more information.

The 2017 Awards

The recipients of the inaugural RSL Giles St Aubyn Awards for first commissioned works of non-fiction were:

£10,000 – David Farrier Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils (4th Estate, 2019)
£5,000 – Lisa Woollett Scavenging (John Murray, 2019)
Judges’ Special Commendation is awarded to Joanna Jolly for From the Red River: The Story of the Murder of a Canadian Aboriginal Girl, Tina Fontaine (Virago, 2019).

The 2017 Awards were judged by Richard Holmes (Chair), Afua Hirsch and Fiona St Aubyn. Read the 2017 press release.