This year, The Wildlife Trusts were delighted to host the Wainwright Prize at London Wildlife Trust's Camley Street Natural Park for their 2024 award ceremony. The prize helps to showcase the growing genre of nature and conservation writing for both adults and children, which in turn helps to deepen reader's connections with the natural world and spark conversations around the future of our planet.
The Wainwright Prize produces a longlist of books under each of the following three categories:
- Nature Writing Prize: Lives entwined with nature
- Conservation Writing Prize: A growing genre of new voices
- Children's Writing on Nature and Conservation Prize: Creating fantastical worlds and finding hope in knowledge
These longlists, which can be found here, are then whittled down into a shortlist by a panel of judges for the final awards ceremony where both a Winner and Highly Commended title is announced for each category.
The shortlists and results of this year's Wainwright Prize are as follows:
Nature Writing Prize:
- Winner: Late Light: The Secret Wonders of a Disappearing World by Michael Malay
- Highly commended: Disperals: On Plants, Borders and Belonging by Jessica J. Lee
Shortlisted titles:
- Local: A Search for Nearby Nature and Wildness by Alistair Humphreys
- Bothy: In Search of Simple Shelter by Kat Hill
- Rural: The Lives of the Working Class Countryside by Rebecca Smith
- The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise by Olivia Laing
- Uprooting: From the Caribbean to the Countryside Finding Home in an English Country Garden by Marchelle Farrell
Conservation Writing Prize:
- Winner: Blue Machine: How the Ocean Shapes Our World by Helen Czerski
- Highly commended: Groundbreakers: The Return of Britain's Wild Boar by Chantal Lyons
Shortlisted titles:
- Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World by John Vaillant
- It's Not Just You: How to Navigate Eco-Anxiety and the Climate Crisis by Tori Tsui
- Nature's Ghost: The World We Lost and How to Bring It Back by Sophie Yeo
- Wasteland: The Dirty Truth About What We Throw Away, Where It Goes and Why It Matters by Oliver Franklin-Wallis
Children's Writing on Nature and Conservation Prize:
- Winner: Foxlight by Katya Balen
- Highly commended: Global by Eoin Colfer and Andrew Donkin; illustrated by Giovanni Rigano
Shortlisted titles:
- The Observologist: A Handbook for Mounting Very Small Scientific Expeditions by Giselle Clarkson
- In the Shadow of the Wolf Queen by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
- Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell
- Skrimsli by Nicola Davies and Jackie Morris
- Wilding: How to Bring Wildlife Back - An Illustrated Guide by Isabella Tree and Angela Harding
- Fly: A Child's Guide to Birds and How to Spot Them by David Lindo and Sara Boccaccini Meadows
Watch the 2024 Award Ceremony
To help more people access and enjoy the Award Ceremony and hear from the shortlisted authors in panel sessions, The Wildlife Trusts recorded this year's event, which can be viewed on our YouTube channel: