The winners of the 2024 Wainwright Prize were announced on Wednesday evening at Camley Street Natural Park, an urban nature reserve in the heart of London, with the event live streamed by The Wildlife Trusts.
The Wainwright Prize is awarded annually to books which most successfully inspire readers to embrace nature and the outdoors and develop a respect for the environment. This year’s winning books highlight the exploration of nature on a global scale through journeys of migration, finding beauty in the everyday, and celebrate the deep connections between humanity and nature through powerful storytelling.
THE 2024 WAINWRIGHT PRIZE WINNERS ARE:
FOR NATURE WRITING:
WINNER:
Late Light: The Secret Wonders of a Disappearing World
by Michael Malay
(Manilla Press, Bonnier Books)
£10.99
Late Light is the story of Michael Malay’s own journey, an Indonesian Australian making a home for himself in England and finding strange parallels between his life and the lives of the animals he examines. Mixing natural history with memoir, this book explores the mystery of our animal neighbours, in all their richness and variety. It is about the wonder these animals inspired in our ancestors, the hope they inspire in us, and the joy they might still hold for our children.
HIGHLY COMMENDED:
Dispersals: On Plants, Borders and Belonging
by Jessica J. Lee
(Hamish Hamilton)
£16.99
Combining memoir, history, and scientific research in precise and poetic prose, Jessica J. Lee meditates on the question of how both plants and people come to belong – or not – as they border cross, and reveals how all our futures are more entwined than we might imagine.
FOR WRITING ON CONSERVATION:
WINNER:
Blue Machine: How the Ocean Shapes Our World
by Helen Czerski
(Torva, Transworld)
£10.99
Earth is home to a huge story that is rarely told – that of our ocean. Not the fish or the dolphins, but the massive ocean engine itself: what it does, why it works, and the many ways it has influenced animals, weather and human history & culture. In a book that will recalibrate our view of this defining feature of our planet, physicist Helen Czerski dives deep to illuminate the murky depths of the ocean engine, examining the messengers, passengers and voyagers that live in it, travel over it, and survive because of it.
HIGHLY COMMENDED:
Groundbreakers: The Return of Britain’s Wild Boar
by Chantal Lyons
(Bloomsbury Wildlife)
£20
In Groundbreakers, Chantal Lyons moves to the boar’s stronghold of the Forest of Dean to get up close and personal with this complex, intelligent and quirky species, and she meets with people across Britain and beyond who celebrate their presence – or want them gone. From Toulouse and Barcelona where they are growing in number and boldness, to the woods of Kent and Sussex where they are fading away again, to Inverness-shire where rewilders welcome them, join Chantal on a journey of discovery as she reveals what it might take for us to coexist with wild boar.
FOR CHILDREN’S WRITING ON NATURE AND CONSERVATION:
WINNER:
by Katya Balen
(Bloomsbury Children’s)
£7.99
A heartbreaking and heart-warming story about sisterhood, found family and accepting love in the most unusual and unknown places.
Fen and Rey are twin sisters. They want answers to who their mother is and where she might be. So when a fox appears late one night, Fen and Rey see it as a sign – it’s here to lead them to their truth, find their real family and fill the missing piece they have felt since they were born. But the wildlands are exactly that: wild. They are wicked and cruel and brutal and this journey will be harder and more life changing than either Fen or Rey ever imagined …
Recommended for ages 9-11.
HIGHLY COMMENDED:
by Eoin Colfer and Andrew Donkin, illustrated by Giovanni Rigano
(Hodder Children’s Books)
£10.99
This is a powerful, hopeful and timely story about the real effects of climate change: two young people on different continents whose lives are catastrophically changed by global warming. A graphic novel with glorious colour artwork throughout for children of all ages – from Eoin Colfer, previously Irish Children’s Laureate, and the team behind Illegal, and his bestselling Artemis Fowl graphic novels.