It was my second year as a first-round manuscript judge for the McKitterick Prize; have a look at my rundown of the shortlist here.

The winner, Louise Kennedy, and runner-up, Liz Hyder, were announced on 29 June. (Nominee Aamina Ahmad won a different SoA Award that night, the Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize for a novel focusing on the experience of travel away from home.) Other recipients included Travis Alabanza, Caroline Bird, Bonnie Garmus and Nicola Griffith. For more on all of this year’s SoA Award winners, see their website.

I’m a big fan of the Wainwright Prize for nature and conservation writing, and have been following it particularly closely since 2020, when I happened to read most of the nominees. In 2021 I also managed to read quite a lot from the longlists; 2022, the first year of an additional prize for children’s literature, saw me reading about a third of the total nominees.

This is the third year that I’ve been part of an “academy” of bloggers, booksellers, former judges and previously shortlisted authors asked to comment on a very long list of publisher submissions. I’m delighted that a few of my preferences made it through to the longlists.

My taste generally runs more to the narrative nature writing than the popular science or travel-based books. I find I’ve read just two from the Nature list (Bersweden and Huband) and one each from Conservation (Pavelle) and Children’s (Hargrave) so far.

The 2023 James Cropper Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing longlist: 

• The Swimmer: The Wild Life of Roger Deakin, Patrick Barkham (Hamish Hamilton)
• The Flow: Rivers, Water and Wildness, Amy-Jane Beer (Bloomsbury)
• Where the Wildflowers Grow, Leif Bersweden (Hodder)
• Twelve Words for Moss, Elizabeth-Jane Burnett (Allen Lane)
• Cacophony of Bone, Kerri ní Dochartaigh (Canongate)
• Sea Bean, Sally Huband (Hutchinson)
• Ten Birds that Changed the World, Stephen Moss (Faber)
• A Line in the World: A Year on the North Sea Coast, Dorthe Nors, translated by Caroline Waight (Pushkin)
• The Golden Mole: And Other Living Treasure, Katherine Rundell, illustrated by Talya Baldwin (Faber)
• Belonging: Natural Histories of Place, Identity and Home, Amanda Thomson (Canongate)
• Why Women Grow: Stories of Soil, Sisterhood and Survival, Alice Vincent (Canongate)
• Landlines, Raynor Winn (Penguin)

The 2023 James Cropper Wainwright Prize for Writing on Conservation longlist: 

• Sarn Helen: A Journey Through Wales, Past, Present and Future, Tom Bullough, illustrated by Jackie Morris (Granta)
• Beastly: A New History of Animals and Us, Keggie Carew (Canongate)
• Rewilding the Sea: How to Save Our Oceans, Charles Clover (Ebury)
• Birdgirl, Mya-Rose Craig (Jonathan Cape)
• The Orchid Outlaw, Ben Jacob (John Murray)
• Elixir: In the Valley at the End of Time, Kapka Kassabova (Jonathan Cape)
• Rooted: How Regenerative Farming Can Change the World, Sarah Langford (Viking)
• Black Ops and Beaver Bombing: Adventures with Britain’s Wild Mammals, Fiona Mathews and Tim Kendall (Oneworld)
• Forget Me Not, Sophie Pavelle (Bloomsbury)
• Fen, Bog, and Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and its Role in the Climate Crisis, Annie Proulx (Fourth Estate)
• The Lost Rainforests of Britain, Guy Shrubsole (HarperCollins)
• Nomad Century: How to Survive the Climate Upheaval, Gaia Vince (Allen Lane)

The 2023 James Cropper Wainwright Prize for Children’s Writing on Nature and Conservation longlist:

• The Earth Book, Hannah Alice (Nosy Crow)
• The Light in Everything, Katya Balen, illustrated by Sydney Smith (Bloomsbury)
• Billy Conker’s Nature-Spotting Adventure, Conor Busuttil (O’Brien)
• Protecting the Planet: The Season of Giraffes, Nicola Davies, illustrated by Emily Sutton (Walker)
• Blobfish, Olaf Falafel (Walker)
• A Friend to Nature, Laura Knowles, illustrated by Rebecca Gibbon (Welbeck)
• Spark, M G Leonard (Walker)
• A Wild Child’s Book of Birds, Dara McAnulty (Macmillan)
• Leila and the Blue Fox, Kiran Millwood Hargrave, illustrated by Tom de Freston (Hachette Children’s Group)
• The Zebra’s Great Escape, Katherine Rundell, illustrated by Sara Ogilvie (Bloomsbury)
• Archie’s Apple, Hannah Shuckburgh, illustrated by Octavia Mackenzie (Little Toller)
• Grandpa and the Kingfisher, Anna Wilson, illustrated by Sarah Massini (Nosy Crow)

It’s impressive that women writers are represented so well this year: 9/12 for Nature, 8/12 for Conservation, and 8/12 for Children’s. Amusingly, Katherine Rundell is on TWO of the lists. There are also, refreshingly, several BIPOC authors, and – I think for the first time ever – a work in translation (A Line in the World by Dorthe Nors, which I have as a set-aside proof copy and will get back into at once).

Here is where I have to admit that quite a number of the nominees, overall, are books I DNFed, authors whose work I’ve tried before and not enjoyed, or books I’ve been turned off of by the reviews. I’ll not mention these by name just now, and will leave any predictions for a future date when I’ve read a few more of the nominees. It seems that I’m most likely to catch up with the majority of the children’s longlist, if anything.

The shortlists will be announced on 10 August, and winners will be announced on 14 September at a 10th Anniversary live event held as part of the Kendal Mountain Festival in Cumbria (tickets available here).

See any nominees you’ve read? Who would you like to see shortlisted?