Food writers award grants £2,000
The inaugural Jane Grigson Trust Award, designed to support new food writers is currently open for submissions, with the deadline for entries being the end of this month, 31 October 2015.
This award was created in honour of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Jane Grigson’s death, and will be made to a writer new to food writing who has already received a commission from a publishing house. In the spirit of Grigson’s writing, the award will be for a non-fiction book on food in the widest sense, from any genre – cook book, memoir, travel, history – so long as the primary subject is food.
Jane Grigson was one of the greatest twentieth-century food writers that Britain has produced. Her books – especially her ground-breaking Good Things, Vegetable Book and Fruit Book – are still regarded by many leading food writers and cooks as major inspirations for their work. Her observation on writing, made in the last year of her life, has been a guiding principle in setting up this award. The intention is that the winner will use the £2,000 sum to fund further travel or research in the vital time between gaining a commission and delivery of the manuscript.
Chair of the judges Geraldene Holt commented: ‘The aim of the Jane Grigson Award is to help a writer to produce a notable new work about food. Jane’s own books represent a pinnacle of achievement and they remain an inspiration to all who follow in her footsteps. She encouraged younger writers with generous and thoughtful advice. And I am confident that Jane would have welcomed most warmly this award in her name.’
The judges for the inaugural 2016 Award will be:
Geraldene Holt (author, chair of the Jane Grigson Trust); Jill Norman (Jane Grigson’s former editor at Penguin, author, Trustee of the JGT); Donald Sloan (Chair of Oxford Gastronomica, Oxford Brookes University’s centre for the study of food, drink and culture, Trustee of the JGT); Rowley Leigh (author, chef and Financial Times cookery columnist); and Bee Wilson (Sunday Telegraph food columnist and author of three books on food-related topics).