Chris Newens wins Jane Grigson Trust Award 2024

19th March 2024

 

The Oxford Cultural Collective is proud to support the annual Jane Grigson Trust Award for New Food and Drink Writers. 

 

The winner of the Jane Grigson Trust Award for 2024 is Chris Newens for Moveable Feasts: Paris in Twenty Meals, which will be published by Profile in 2025.

Moveable Feasts: Paris in Twenty Meals gives a whole new flavour profile to Paris, using recipes that are characteristic of each of the city’s twenty arrondissement. The book explores the tastes of the city’s diverse subcultures, from Congolese exiles to fifth-generation Algerians, from the modern heirs of Hemingway to sex club-going libertines.

 

Chris Newens is an award-winning writer originally from south-west London, where his family ran the same bakery and tea rooms for six generations. After graduating in anthropology from the London School of Economics, he moved to Paris, where he has now lived for more than a decade. In that time, he has held numerous jobs both in and outside of writing, from editor of erotic fiction to Segway tour guide.

 

The two runners up are:

The Silk Roads Cookbook: Recipes from Baku to Beijing by Anna Ansari (to be published by Dorling Kindersley in October 2025)

Sift: The Elements of Great Baking by Nicola Lamb (to be published by Ebury Press in May 2024)

 

Joining Donald Sloan, chair of the Jane Grigson Trust and of the Oxford Cultural Collective on the judging panel were: Georgina Hayden, food writer, stylist and presenter; Diana Henry, food writer, journalist and trustee of the Jane Grigson Trust; Jill Norman, food writer, publisher and trustee of the Jane Grigson Trust; and Sami Tamimi, chef, restaurateur and food writer.

Sami Tamimi, guest judge, said: “I think Chris Newens is a brilliant writer and the whole narrative to his book is refreshing and totally original. As I was reading, I felt I wanted to meet Chris and spend time with him in Paris, not to go to the old Paris that everyone knows but to look at it from a fresh, modern perspective. But it is the writing that really grabs you about this book.”

 

The Jane Grigson Trust Award, created in memory of the distinguished British food writer Jane Grigson, is made to a first-time writer of a book about food or drink which has been commissioned but not yet published. In the spirit of Jane Grigson and her writing, 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. The winner receives a cheque for £2000 award and the runners-up receive £100 of book tokens. All shortlisted authors receive copies of The Best of Jane Grigson.

The award reception took place at Quo Vadis in London on 18th March 2024.