Thursday 18 June 2020
The announcement of the winners of the four Orwell Prizes is postponed by a fortnight until Thursday 9th July. We will let you know what form the announcement will take as soon as possible. We want to make both the shortlisted and winning work make as much as a contribution to this moment as we can. We are grateful to everyone involved, and particularly to our shortlistees, for their patience.
The Orwell Prizes aim to encourage good writing, thinking and reporting about politics. Over the next three weeks, we will be sharing a series of Orwell Prize ‘shortlist interviews’, conversations between some of the writers, journalists and reporters shortlisted for this year’s awards. These conversations are part of our efforts to offer a new kind of platform to our nominees. We want to offer a resource to anyone interested in how good political writing and reporting happens, and promote connections and reflections across different boundaries, from genre and method, to politics and personal perspectives. The first of these interviews, between Bernardine Evaristo (Girl, Women, Other – Political Fiction) and Amelia Gentleman (The Windrush Betrayal – Political Writing) will be up on our YouTube channel next week.
The Orwell Youth Prize is now closed, after receiving over 1200 entries from young people writing on the theme ‘the future we want’. Judging is now under way, and we are looking forward to sharing the winning pieces with you later in July. As we said when we set off in this new direction at the beginning of April, at the heart of George Orwell’s legacy is his fearless appraisal of the way we communicate with one another, as individuals and as a society. We hope to do our bit by continuing to celebrate and reward honest writing and reporting, drawing on Orwell’s own work to promote unheard voices and explore how people can tell the truth in these testing and uncertain circumstances.
As ever, the most comprehensive way to stay up to date is via our monthly newsletter, a one stop junk shop of all things Orwell. For the latest news, follow us on Instagram at @orwellfoundation and @orwellyouthprize or Twitter at @theorwellprize and @orwellyouthpriz (yes, priz).
