Eight-Strong Shortlist Unveiled for Scotland’s £1,500 Annual Anne Brown Essay Prize
The £1,500 prize and trophy will be awarded during a special event on Sunday 28 September at Bladnoch Distillery during the annual Wigtown Book Festival.
An eight-strong shortlist has been unveiled for the 2025 Anne Brown Essay Prize, which champions excellence in short non-fiction by writers from Scotland.
The £1,500 prize and trophy will be awarded during a special event on Sunday 28 September at Bladnoch Distillery during Wigtown Book Festival.
This year’s shortlist reflects a wide range of authors tackling a range of subjects – including some of the biggest confronting contemporary society.
The essays going forward to the finals are:
- A Letter from my Father - Alison Craig
- Am I Missing Something - Robert Dawson Scott
- Taps - Meghan Flaherty
- Firle - Tamara Fulcher
- Lepanto - Dani Garavelli
- The Stone Is Heavy in My Hand - Kristie de Garis
- Tender Omens - Saskia McCracken
- In Search of Tove Janssen in Helsinki - Christiana Spens.
The list features established and emerging talents from the worlds of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and journalism. Subjects addressed range from Scotland’s Christian heritage to the housing crisis, new motherhood and absent fathers.
One of the most powerful literary forms
Adrian Turpin, artistic director of Wigtown Book Festival, said: “The quality of entries for this year’s Anne Brown Essay Prize underline that it is now firmly established as an important feature of Scotland's literary landscape.
“The essay is one of the most powerful literary forms, allowing writers to take readers by the hand and lead them into unfamiliar times, places and experiences and offer fresh perspectives on every aspect of existence.
“Choosing between this year’s finalists will be a challenging task – and rightly so – thanks to the richness of the writing and the variety of the subjects being addressed.”
Commemorating Anne Brown
The prize commemorates Anne Brown (1942-2021), former chair of Wigtown Book Festival, who was also a BBC radio journalist and senior producer.This year’s judges are by the novelist and memoirist Ali Millar (The Last Days) and Wigtown Book Festival’s artistic director, Adrian Turpin.
Previous winners are Sarah Whiteside, Rodge Glass and Dani Garavelli. The essays will be published on the Wigtown Book Festival website and also on The Herald newspaper website, with an excerpt appearing in the print edition.
Precision, originality and curiosity
- The Anne Brown Essay Prize is organised by the Wigtown Book Festival in association with the Herald newspaper.
- The prize is made possible thanks to the generous support of Anne Brown’s daughter Jo Lawrence and her son Richard Brown.
- It celebrates the best recent literary essay by a writer in, from or with a long-standing connection to Scotland.
- It rewards precise writing, original thinking, curiosity and creative approaches to non-fiction.
- Entries can be on any subject.
- The maximum length is 4,000 words.
