Author and poet Rebecca Perry has won the 2026 Waterstones debut fiction prize for May We Feed the King, praised as a “delicious and dream-like tale”.
Chosen from a shortlist of six novels, May We Feed the King follows a present-day curator whose job is to dress rooms in historic houses. (“When you see a replica feast scene in the great hall of an old building, I am the person who placed the pomegranates beside the pie.”) They become increasingly obsessed by the subject of their latest commission, a medieval king whose own story about his reluctance to rule unfolds in parallel.
