Catch up on the 2026 SoA Awards

News

19 June 2026

In this story: Events, Prizes, SoA Awards

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Thank you for helping us celebrate the 2026 SoA Awards

“An evening celebrating wonderment, imagination, tenacity, the wild glory of language… the grit, the grace, the courage, the calling and the heart-soaring loveliness of being a writer.”

– Cerrie Burnell, Keynote speaker

Last night we hosted the Society of Authors’ Awards and Summer Party, an annual event honouring some of the best and most promising literary voices of the year from across fiction, non-fiction, poetry and children’s literature.

We welcomed over 300 guests into the stunning venue of Southwark Cathedral, and many more joined us virtually via our livestream.

The evening opened with a few words from the Very Reverend Dr Mark Oakley, Dean of Southwark Cathedral, who reminded us of the power of stories to forge human connections and enrich our lives.

“By telling stories, fictional and non-fictional, we share ourselves in all our complexity, our emotions, our birth, our love, our loss, our suffering, our end, our hope and everything in between. And by sharing we learn that we are not alone, that others have stories too, and often they overlap.”

Our host once again for the night was SoA board member Helen Epega, a writer, librettist and composer. And the keynote was delivered by author, actor and activist Cerrie Burnell, who spoke with deep feeling about her own journey as an author, the urgent need for diverse stories, and the “soft enchantment” that compels writers to write.

“To write is an act of risk and excitement. A commitment to hope and to the gleaming power of imagination. It’s like tightrope walking in the dark. It’s both the heartbreak of falling and the elation of winning.”

And there were many elated winners last night. During the evening, we distributed more than £130,000 in prizes across nine different awards. The awards highlighted a diverse range of outstanding talent, bringing brilliant and vital work to the world. We can’t wait to see where their stories take them next.

A huge thank you to everyone who joined us, both in person and online, for helping to make the evening unforgettable. Thank you too for all of the love online, you can follow and share the joy via the hashtag #SoAwards.