Arundhati Roy and Sarah Perry are among the 16 authors longlisted for The Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction in 2026.
Awarded for excellence, originality and accessibility in narrative non-fiction, the prize was launched in 2024 following a study that found only 35.5 per cent of winners across major UK nonfiction awards over the previous decade were women. It is a companion to the globally recognised, long-established Women’s Prize for Fiction.
Novelist and political activist Arundhati Roy, who won the Booker Prize with The God of Small Things in 1997, is among the most recognisable names to be featured on this year’s list. She is nominated for her searing memoir Mother Mary Comes To Me, which The Independent’s books critic Martin Chilton praised as “funny, wise, candid and perceptive”.
Also on the list is British author Sarah Perry with Death of an Ordinary Man, an emotional account of her father-in-law’s final illness, as well as Albanian academic Lea Ypi who is nominated for Indignity: A Life Reimagined, a personal, genre-blending family history that investigates her grandmother’s life against the backdrop of political turmoil.
Chair of the judging panel Thangam Debbonair, who is CEO of UK Opera Association and a former Labour shadowbencher, described the longlist, which spans politics, memoir, science, nature, history, art and biography, as “hopeful”.
The panel also includes Roma Agrawa, engineer, author and broadcaster, Nicola Elliott, founder of NEOM Wellbeing, Nina Stibbe, novelist and memoirist, and Nicola Williams, Crown Court judge and thriller author.
A shortlist of six will be unveiled on 25 March 2026, with the winner announced at a London ceremony on 11 June 2026. They will receive £30,000 and a limited-edition artwork known as the Charlotte in recognition of their achievements.
Previous recipients of the prize include NHS Dr Rachel Clarke (The Story of a Heart, 2025) and Naomi Klein (Doppelganger, 2024).
The Women’s Prize for Nonfiction 2026 longlist is as follows:
Daughters of the Bamboo Grove: China’s Stolen Children and a Story of Separated Twins by Barbara Demick (Granta)
The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A People’s History of Afghanistan by Lyse Doucet (Hutchinson Heinemann, Cornerstone, Penguin Random House UK)
Don’t Let It Break You, Honey: A Memoir About Saving Yourself by Jenny Evans (Robinson, Little, Brown Book Group, Hachette UK)
Art Cure: The Science of How the Arts Transform Our Health by Daisy Fancourt (Cornerstone Press, Cornerstone, Penguin Random House UK)
With the Law on Our Side: How the Law Works for Everyone and How We Can Make It Work Better by Lady Hale (The Bodley Head, Vintage, Penguin Random House UK)
To Be Young, Gifted and Black: Creativity and Race in the 21st Century by Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason (Oneworld, Oneworld Publications)
Artists, Siblings, Visionaries: The Lives and Loves of Gwen and Augustus John by Judith Mackrell (Picador, Pan Macmillan)
Ask Me How It Works: Love in an Open Marriage by Deepa Paul (Viking, Penguin General, Penguin Random House UK)
Death of an Ordinary Man by Sarah Perry (Jonathan Cape, Vintage, Penguin Random House UK)
The Genius of Trees: How Trees Mastered the Elements and Shaped the World by Harriet Rix (The Bodley Head, Vintage, Penguin Random House UK)
Hotel Exile: Paris in the Shadow of War by Jane Rogoyska (Allen Lane, Penguin Press, Penguin Random House UK)
Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy (Hamish Hamilton, Penguin General, Penguin Random House UK)
Finding Albion: Myth, Folklore and the Quest for a Hidden Britain by Zakia Sewell (Hodder Press, Hodder & Stoughton, Hachette UK)
To Exist As I Am: A Doctor’s Notes on Recovery and Radical Acceptance by Grace Spence Green (Wellcome Collection, Profile Books)
Nation of Strangers: Rebuilding Home in the 21st Century by Ece Temelkuran (Canongate)
Indignity: A Life Reimagined by Lea Ypi (Allen Lane, Penguin Press, Penguin Random House UK)
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