ENTRIES CLOSE 31ST JANUARY 2026
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An Award for
Nature Writing
Welcome to the third Nature Chronicles Prize.
We are a biennial, international, English-language literary award proud to have established itself as a generator of stimulating, contemporary essay-length non-fiction on nature. When the prize was conceived during Covid, we hoped to create a place for original thinking about the present world, and the first two prizes exceeded all our expectations. It has been a revelatory process so far – we cannot wait to see what this prize has in store.
The winner will receive £10,000 and five runners up £1,000 each. All six winning entries will be published in our third anthology.
About Us
The prize was conceived to mark the global pandemic and serve those who witnessed it. It is also a memorial to Prudence Scott, a lifelong nature diarist who died in 2019. Her Trust is the prize’s sponsor.
Entry Criteria
- The competition is open to any work of non-fiction prose between 2,000 and 8,000 words long on a topic the writer considers to be contemporary nature writing.
- It is for work originating in the English language.
- Pieces will be judged anonymously and must not have been published, self-published or accepted for publication in print or online. Essays, standalone extracts from unpublished books, and diaries may all be submitted.
- The entry fee is £15 per submission, which will include a copy of the resulting anthology.
CONGRATULATIONS TO THE 2024 NATURE CHRONICLES PRIZE WINNER!
MATT SOWERBY for his essay Hope is the Thing with Flippers
And well done to the runners up
Niellah Arboine — Into Each Life, Some Rain Must Fall
Meg Bertera-Berwick — The Kailyards
Emma Harding — Wild Track
David Higgins — Minibeasts
Neha Sinha — Ibis Sea
Key Dates
1st August 2025 – Open for entries
31st January 2026 – Closing date
1st August 2026 – Longlist announced
1st September 2026 – Shortlist announced
November 2026 – Prizegiving and book launch
Our fourth judge is @sourbee_matt, an environmental writer, poet, and activist, and the winner of the 2024 Nature Chronicles Prize!
Read more about Matt on our website
http://www.naturechroniclesprize.com
The next judge we'd like to introduce you to is @jurassicg1rl, a multi-award-winning earth scientist who has worked for the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site and the National Trust
Read more about Anjana on our website
https://naturechroniclesprize.com
We're continuing to introduce you to our 2025/26 judges, and next up is Kevin Duffy!
Kevin has spent over thirty years in the publishing industry, and in 2006 founded the publisher @Ofmooseandmen based in Hebden Bridge.
https://naturechroniclesprize.com
Over the coming weeks we're going to introduce you to our judges!
First up is @LindaJCracknell, a writer of fiction and narrative non-fiction.
She is inspired by place and memory, and walking is essential to her creative process.
https://naturechroniclesprize.com
Our Sponsor | Prudence Scott (1926–2019)
Prudence Mary Milligan was born in 1926 to a naval family. She was given a Quaker education and then trained as a nurse. In 1952 she married and in 1961 moved to the Lake District where she brought up her four children, mostly as a single parent. It was a quiet, contained sort of existence, which immersed her children in nature: hedgehogs, Fell ponies, curlews. She was a great reader, and sometimes painted and sometimes wrote poetry – but always she kept up with her journals. In them, she observes her children and her surroundings with the same restless, curious, unsentimental eye.
She died in London on 1 September 2019, aged 93.
I count the days happiest when I have ridden a horse, baked a cake, bathed the children, written for an hour or two, and read before sleeping.
July 1964
The Judges 2025/26
Linda Cracknell
Linda Cracknell is a writer of fiction and narrative non-fiction. She is inspired by place and memory, and walking is essential to her creative process. Her novel Call of the Undertow (2013) follows a cartographer and her friendship with a local Caithness boy and his revelatory mapping. Her essay collection Writing Landscape (2023) was described as ‘an object lesson in attentive looking’ (Scotsman). Doubling Back (reissued by Saraband 2024) recounts a series of walks from the past – personal or relating to such groups as drovers. In 2025 her memoir exploring a seafaring inheritance is published: Sea Marked: Throwing a Line to a Coastal Path. She lives in Highland Perthshire.
Photograph: Robin Dance
Kevin Duffy
Kevin Duffy has spent over thirty years in the publishing industry, and in 2006 founded the publisher Bluemoose Books – according to the Guardian a ‘small but mighty literary hit factory’ based in Hebden Bridge. Their books have been translated into thirteen languages and authors have won or been longlisted/shortlisted for many literary prizes. The Gallows Pole by Benjamin Myers was shown on BBC2 in 2023, and in 2025, Leonard and Hungry Paul by Rónán Hession will appear on television screens as a six-part BBC Drama series.
Anjana Khatwa
Dr Anjana Khatwa is a multi-award-winning earth scientist who has worked for the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site and the National Trust, and contributed to and presented TV programmes for the BBC and ITV. In 2021, she received a National Diversity Award for championing inclusion within earth sciences and natural heritage and was longlisted for the Nan Shepherd Prize. Her other awards include the Geographical Engagement Award (Royal Geographical Society), the R H Worth Award (Geological Society UK) and the Halstead Medal (The Geologists’ Association). She lives with her family in Dorset in a house filled with rocks and fossils. Her first book, The Whispers of Rock, is published in 2025.
Photograph: Rob Coombe
Matt Sowerby
Matt Sowerby is an environmental writer, poet, and activist, and the winner of the 2024 Nature Chronicles Prize. As a performance poet, he has won two national poetry slams, and has performed both in the Houses of Parliament and on BBC Radio 3. His writing has also been exhibited at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. He is the Youth Programmes Lead – Europe, at The Resilience Project, an organisation helping young climate changemakers find their peace, their power, and their people. He also sits on the National Trust’s Regional Advisory Group (North England).
Photograph: Tom Staveley
Patrick Walsh
Patrick Walsh is an experienced agent who has helped a roll call of best-selling authors to launch their writing lives. Born and brought up in Venezuela, he studied law at Cambridge before becoming a literary agent. Having co-founded Conville & Walsh in 2000, he then sold the agency to Curtis Brown before founding PEW Literary in 2016. His clients have won or been shortlisted for numerous literary awards. Patrick has a keen interest in non-fiction, where his interests are broad and eclectic. He has a taste for the transgressive, the political and feisty, and science, especially where that involves the natural world, animals or conservation.
News/Events/Updates
Remembering Jamie Normington
The prize would like to express our profound shock and sadness at the loss of our 2023/24 judge, prizegiving presenter and friend Jamie Normington in April of this year. We will remember you, Jamie,...
Meet the 2024 Overall Winner!
Matthew Sowerby - Hope Is The Thing With Flippers Matt Sowerby is a writer and environmental activist from Cumbria, trying to find the words for living through a climate crisis. He was a 2018...
Meet the Winners 2024
Neha Sinha - Ibis Sea Neha Sinha is a conservation biologist based in India. She has worked for the cause of environmental conservation for several years, with a special focus on environmental...
The Nature Chronicles Prize 2
Contained within this volume are the outstanding shortlisted entries for the second iteration of the prize.
These winning works address the feelings of responsibility, anxiety and hope that come with living at this time on this planet and celebrate the species we share the earth with – from insects to blue whales. Together, the essays represent the freshest, most exciting contemporary nature writing by emerging and established authors.
The anthology is introduced by nature writer Marchelle Farrell, winner of the 2021 Nan Shepherd prize for nature writing.
Published by Saraband.
