2025 Jane Grigson Trust – Sous Chef award for new food and drink writers is open for submissions

 

The Oxford Cultural Collective is proud to support the Jane Grigson Trust. 

 

The Jane Grigson Trust Award for New Food and Drink Writers enters its 10th year with a new sponsor, online cook shop Sous Chef. The award, which will now be known as The Jane Grigson Trust – Sous Chef Award for New Food and Drink Writers, is open for entries until midnight 30^th November 2024.

 

Commenting on the new partnership between Sous Chef and the Jane Grigson Trust, the Trust’s chair Donald Sloan says: “I’m delighted that Sous Chef is supporting the Jane Grigson Trust Award. This enables us to continue the important work the award does to celebrate work from debut food and drink writers and to support them on their journey to publication. The award has always been generous and open in spirit, an approach that is shared by the Sous Chef team. We look forward to working with Sous Chef as we begin the search for our next award winner, the first for the newly renamed The Jane Grigson Trust – Sous Chef Award for New Food and Drink Writers.”

Sous Chef founder Nicola Lando says: “This partnership with the Jane Grigson Trust is a celebration of curiosity in food and cooking. Just as the Trust identifies and nurtures the next generation of writing talent, at Sous Chef we are constantly searching for the world’s best ingredients and culinary innovations. Together, we champion those who bring something unique and authentic to the table – whether it’s through words or flavours.”

 

The judging panel for the the Jane Grigson Trust – Sous Chef Award for New Food and Drink Writers 2025 is: Ravinder Bhogal, journalist, author, chef and restaurateur; Felicity Cloake, food writer and trustee of the Jane Grigson Trust; Clarissa Hyman, food writer and trustee of the Jane Grigson Trust; and Andi Oliver, broadcaster, chef, restaurateur and food writer. Donald Sloan, chair of the Jane Grigson Trust and of the Oxford Cultural Collective, will chair the panel.

Launched in 2016, the award has become one of the UK’s most sought-after specialist literary prizes. Created in honour of the distinguished British food writer Jane Grigson, it is awarded to a writer new to food and drink writing (although they may have written on other subjects) whose book has already been commissioned but not yet been published.

Submissions are welcome from publishers, agents and authors not just of traditional cookbooks but of all non-fiction books that have food or drink at their heart.

The £2000 prize money is intended to help the winner fund further travel or research in the vital time between gaining a commission and delivery of the manuscript.  The runners-up will receive a Sous Chef voucher and all of the shortlisted authors will also receive a selection of Jane Grigson’s books. The shortlist will be announced in mid-February and the winner and runners-up will be announced at an awards evening at Quo Vadis in mid-March.

 

The 2024 winner was Chris Newens for Moveable Feasts: Paris in Twenty Meals, which uses food to explore Paris like never before and will be published by Profile Books in 2025. Chris says: “Winning the Jane Grigson Trust Award offered me an incredible boost, both firing my confidence in the difficult middle-period of my project and offering unexpected financial help that let me research certain aspects of the book much more thoroughly than would have otherwise been possible.”

Previous winners include Dina Macki for Bahari which showcases Omani cuisine in all its diversity, Gurdeep Loyal for Mother Tongue which celebrates the hybrid third-culture cooking of second-generation migrants around the world today, Angela Clutton for The Vinegar Cupboard and Dan Saladino for Eating to Extinction, which traces his journey of discovery into the world’s most endangered foods.

 

To learn more, including how to enter – follow this link