Shortlist for Sherborne Prize for Travel Writing announced.

We are pleased to announce that the judges for the inaugural annual £10,000 Sherborne Prize for Travel Writing have chosen their shortlist of six books for 2026. Awarded for the first time this year, the prize is a significant contribution to the programme of the unique and popular Sherborne Travel Writing Festival as well as a boost to its reputation as a window on the quality and creativity of contemporary travel writing.The prize will be presented to a published British or European author whose work encourages understanding between peoples and across societies, countering the division and isolation of the present day.

Acclaimed travel writer and novelist Colin Thubron, award-winning author and bestselling biographer Sara Wheeler, and literary agent at Aitken Alexander Associates Emma Paterson formed the judging panel for the 2026 award.

Chair of the judges Colin Thubron said: “In its vigour and diversity alone, our shortlist is a striking tribute to the indispensable value of travel and the seriousness of its writing.  Travel writing has never been richer or more versatile.”

The winner will be revealed at a special event on the morning of Sunday 12th April 2026 at the hugely popular Sherborne Travel Writing Festival which runs from 10th -12th April in the Powell Theatre, Sherborne.

The shortlist for the Sherborne Travel Writing Prize for 2026, chosen from over 70 submissions, is:

Russia Starts Here by Howard Amos, 

A Wild Pastoral by Kapka Kassabova, 

Is A River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane,

Greyhound by Joanna Pocock,

Night Train to Odesa: Covering the Human Cost of Russia’s War by Jen Stout

,Lone Wolf by Adam Weymouth.

The wide variety of locations, concepts and motivations at the heart of these six extraordinary books range from: a summer spent with the last moving pastoralists in Europe, a journey across the US from Detroit to Los Angeles by Greyhound bus, the human cost of the brutal war in Ukraine, the question of whether or not rivers are living beings, an epic walk across the Alps in the footsteps of a wolf, and a personal quest to understand an overlooked region on the edge of Russia.