Elected: 2025
Lucy Ellmann is a novelist. Her first novel, Sweet Desserts, won the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1988. Her most recent, Ducks, Newburyport, was shortlisted for the Booker, won the Goldsmiths Prize and the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction, and shared Sweden’s Kulturhuset Stadsteatern’s 2023 International Book of the Year award with its translator. Born in the US, she has lived in the UK since 1970.
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.
