Call for entries: 2019 Jane Grigson Trust Award
The 2019 Jane Grigson Trust Award for first time writers of books on food or drink is now open for entries from writers, publishers and agents. The closing date is 30 November 2018 and entries can be made at www.janegrigsontrust.org.uk.
Judges for this year’s award include Geraldene Holt and Jeremy Lee, Patrons of the Oxford Cultural Collective.
Now in its fourth year, the £2000 Jane Grigson Trust Award, created in honour of one of the greatest food writers that Britain has ever produced, is made to a writer new to food and drink writing (although they may have written on other subjects) who has already received a commission from a publishing house but whose book has not yet been published.
In the spirit of Jane Grigson, the Award is for a non-fiction book on food and drink in the widest sense, from any genre – cookbook, memoir, travel, history – as long as the primary subject is food or drink.
Geraldene Holt, chair of the Jane Grigson Trust explains: “The aim of the Jane Grigson Trust Award is to discover talent and promise in a writer working on their first book on food. We hope the prize will allow the winner to dig deeper or travel further in pursuing their chosen subject. The Trustees are delighted that earlier recipients of the award have already been recognized as making an invaluable contribution to the literature of gastronomy.”
The winner of the 2018 Jane Grigson Trust Award was Angela Clutton for The Vinegar Cupboard, to be published by Absolute Press in February 2019.
Angela Clutton says of winning the award: “The Jane Grigson Trust Award has made just the most enormous difference to the development of The Vinegar Cupboard. First, there’s the gee-up given by the fact these eminent food professionals on the panel feel this book – my book! – is one they want to read and help make happen in the best way possible. Then the ongoing support from the Trust as they use whatever connections they have to try to help too. There’s the ripple out into the wider food community who sit up and take just a little more notice about what you are doing. I have found it even changed how my publisher viewed the book – being able to slap a badge saying ‘award-winning’ on a first time book is great for their ability to push it out and commit resources to it. And all of that is before even before considering the prize-money that was a big help me for me in affording research and writing trips.
‘There have been many times in the months between winning the Award and finishing the book where I have had cause to write to the Trust and say, again, ‘thank you’ because something else has happened that is only because of the Award. To anyone who has done the amazing feat of getting a first book commissioned I can only wholeheartedly say they should – must – apply for this because it is a very very good thing indeed.”
The other shortlisted books in 2018 were:
- Casablanca: My Moroccan Food by Nargisse Benkabbou, which was published by Mitchell Beazley in May 2018.
- A Table in Venice: Recipes from my Home by Skye McAlpine, which was published by Bloomsbury in March 2018.
The judges for the 2019 Award are: Geraldene Holt (author, chair of the Jane Grigson Trust); Clarissa Hyman (food and travel writer, Trustee of the JGT); Jeremy Lee (chef and food writer, Trustee of the JGT); Josceline Dimbleby (cookery writer and former Trustee of the JGT) and William Sitwell (writer, TV presenter and food critic).
Previous winners of the Jane Grigson Trust Award are Vicky Hayward for The New Art of Cookery: A Spanish Friar’s Kitchen Notebook and Alex Andreou for The Magic Bayleaf.
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