Elected: 2025
Damian Le Bas’s first book The Stopping Places won the Somerset Maugham Award, an RSL Jerwood Award, and was shortlisted for the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year. Widely published as a journalist and poet, he has received a Society of Authors Travelling Scholarship and an honorary Master of Education from the University of Chichester. Damian read Theology at the University of Oxford. His second book The Drowned Places was published in 2025. He is a native Romani speaker.
Fellows are nominated by peers and elected by our Council of writers – our governing Board. Being elected a Fellow of the RSL is a lifetime honour. This role gives them the opportunity to support other writers, readers and the future of literature. The RSL connects writers in the Fellowship to one another, and to a wider readership.
