Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize

For a novel focusing on the experience of travel away from home

In memory of Malcolm Lowry and endowed by Gordon Bowker, his biographer, and Ramdei Bowker.

A prize awarded to a UK or Irish writer, or a writer currently resident in those countries, for a novel focusing on the experience of travel away from home.

Inspired by Malcolm Lowry’s novel, Under the Volcano and in celebration of its author, the prize aims to inspire literary excellence and encourage writers to travel and to write from the resulting experience.

The winner will receive £2,000 and the runner-up £750.

The Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize is currently open for submissions.
Deadline for entries: Friday 31 October 2025.

For a novel focusing on the experience of travel away from home. The winner will receive £2,000 and the runner-up £750.

Deadline: Friday 31 October 2025

Entry criteria

The novel must be a full length work in the English language by one living author (not a translation, and not a work for children).
The novel must have been first published in the UK or Ireland between 1 November 2024 and 31 October 2025.
The author must be British or Irish, or be currently resident in the UK or Ireland at the time of submission to the prize.
We cannot accept books that are only available in e-format or that are self-published or where the author has contributed or paid for the costs of publishing.
Submissions must be made by the print publisher.
All submissions must have been written by the author and cannot contain the use of AI generated works.
Maximum two entries per imprint.

Conditions of entry

Present employees (or anyone currently connected with the administration of the Society of Authors’ grants and prizes) or members of the SoA Management Committee may not apply for any of the grants and prizes administered by the Society of Authors.

The decision of the judges is final and they reserve the right not to award the prize if, in their opinion, no works entered reach a sufficiently high standard. Judges may call in books if they so wish.

We request that “Winner of the Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize" or "Shortlisted for the Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize" be printed on the cover of subsequent editions of winning/ shortlisted books.

How to enter

Complete the below form and upload a PDF version of the novel. Once complete please send five copies (non-returnable) of the published book or publisher's proof to:

The Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize,
Prizes Department,
The Society of Authors,
24 Bedford Row,
London WC1R 4EH.

Please note that couriers should use the entrance on Theobalds Road.

Please also upload a digital version of the book when prompted below. If the file you are using is too large for the form, please complete the rest of the entry form and then send the file via email or WeTransfer to prizes@societyofauthors.org.

The Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize will be awarded at the annual Society of Authors' Awards ceremony in 2026.
For any queries, please email prizes@societyofauthors.org.

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Entry must be a novel in English and not a translation

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The novel must have been first published in the UK or Ireland between 1 November 2024 and 31 October 2025.

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Submissions must be made by the print publisher and are limited to two submissions per imprint.

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Authors must be resident in the UK or Ireland at the time of submission OR be a British or Irish national

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Authors must be resident in the UK or Ireland at the time of submission OR be a British or Irish national.

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Please write a short bio (max 100 words). This may typically include recent publications, the name, date, and details of previous prizes won, education, training, and career background, and pronouns.

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The 2025 Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize winner

Hisham Matar for My Friends (Viking, Penguin Random House)

Photography © Natalie Thorpe

The 2025 Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize winner

Elif Shafak for There are Rivers in the Sky (Viking, Penguin Random House)

Photography © Natalie Thorpe

The 2025 Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize runner-up

Jo Hamya for The Hypocrite (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Orion)

Photography © Natalie Thorpe

The 2025 Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize shortlist

Matt Haig for The Life Impossible (Canongate Books)

David Nicholls for You Are Here (Sceptre, Hodder & Stoughton

Ali Smith for Gliff (Hamish Hamilton, Penguin Random House)

‘The books on this year’s Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize shortlist transport the reader to worlds perilous, political, speculative and amorous. Elif Shafak’s There Are Rivers in the Sky begins in ancient Mesopotamia and is a wondrous riverine odyssey. Set in London and Libya, My Friends by Hisham Matar offers a profound meditation on the pain of exile and the salve of friendship. In the immaculately crafted The Hypocrite, the fuse for a generational feud is lit on an Aeolian island. Matt Haig’s The Life Impossible enchants on a boundary-transcending journey through Ibiza. The dystopian near-future Britain-set Gliff by Ali Smith movingly articulates the courage that resistance demands of us. And in David Nicholls’ witty and touching You Are Here, a pas-de-deux between two lonely hikers unfolds across the Lake District. These six titles deserve to be savoured for their arresting world views, evocations of resilience and glorious, immersive storytelling.’
— Jini Reddy, 2025 Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize judge

If you are interested in buying any of the books shortlisted here, please visit Bookshop.org. A percentage of each sale will go to the Society of Authors Access Fund, providing access grants to help authors attend events, residencies and retreats.

With thanks, the judges of the 2025 Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize:

Dr Elizabeth-Jane Burnett

Dr Elizabeth-Jane Burnett is a writer and academic whose work has a largely environmental focus. Publications include the nature writing books Twelve Words for Moss (2023) and The Grassling: A Geological Memoir (2019), the poetry collections Of Sea (2021) and Swims (2017) and literary criticism A Social Biography of Contemporary Innovative Poetry Communities: The Gift, the Wager and Poethics (2017). Twelve Words for Moss was shortlisted for the Wainwright and Jhalak prizes and a Sunday Times and Countryfile Book of the Year. She is a Guardian Country Diarist and judge for the Women’s Prize 2025.

Derek Owusu

Derek Owusu is an award-winning writer and poet from North London. His first novel, That Reminds Me, and the first work of fiction to be published by Stormzy’s Merky Books imprint, won the Desmond Elliott Prize for best debut novel published in the UK and Ireland. His second novel, Losing the Plot, was published in 2022 and was Longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and Jhalak Prize. In 2023 he was selected as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists.

Jini Reddy

Born in the UK to Indian parents from South Africa, Jini grew up in Montreal, Canada, and lived in France before working in book publishing in London and Hong Kong. She is the author of Wanderland (2020), shortlisted for the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year and for the Wainwright Prize. Her first book, Wild Times (2016) won the British Guild of Travel Writers’ Adele Evans Award. She has contributed to anthologies, including the landmark Women on Nature (2021) and the forthcoming Freewheeling (2025). Her texts have been displayed in London, notably at the Royal Festival Hall, where she was commissioned to write six poems, the sole writer among twenty visual artists. As a travel and features writer, Jini’s byline has appeared in The Guardian, The i paper, The Times, Sunday Times Style, Financial Times, The Sunday Telegraph, TIME and many more publications. In 2019, she was named one of National Geographic’s Women of Impact and in 2021, Jini delivered the inaugural Jan Morris Lecture at the Hay Festival in Wales. She is an Advisory Fellow at the Royal Literary Fund and coaches aspiring writers.

2024

Winner: Soula Emmanuel for Wild Geese (Footnote Press)
Runner-up: Cecile Pin for Wandering Souls (HarperCollins UK, 4th Estate)
Shortlist:
Santanu Bhattacharya for One Small Voice (Fig Tree, Penguin Random House)
Soula Emmanuel for Wild Geese (Footnote Press)
Isabella Hammad for Enter Ghost (Jonathan Cape)
Cecile Pin for Wandering Souls (HarperCollins UK, 4th Estate)

2023

Winner: Aamina Ahmad for The Return of Faraz Ali (Sceptre, Hodder & Stoughton)
Runner-up: David Park for Spies in Canaan (Bloomsbury Publishing)
Shortlist:
Julia Armfield for Our Wives Under the Sea (Picador, Pan Macmillan)
Vesna Goldsworthy for Iron Curtain: A Love Story (Chatto & Windus, Vintage)
Alex Hyde for Violets (Granta Books)
Anjali Joseph for Keeping in Touch (Scribe UK)

2022

Winner: Sheila Llewellyn for Winter in Tabriz (Sceptre, Hodder & Stoughton)
Runner-up: Jamie O’Connell for Diving For Pearls (Doubleday/Transworld/Penguin Random House)
Shortlist:
Olivia Sudjic for Asylum Road (Bloomsbury)
Catherine Menon for Fragile Monsters (Penguin Books)
Tessa McWatt for The Snow Line (Scribe UK)

Gordon Bowker

Gordon Bowker (1934-2019) was an acclaimed literary biographer who wrote books on the authors Malcolm Lowry, James Joyce and George Orwell. Bowker worked as a lecturer and wrote dramas and documentaries for radio and television before he turned his attention to writing biographies. His work has been longlisted for the Carnegie Medal for Literary Excellence, was shortlisted for the PEN Center USA West Literary Award and he was the runner-up in 2013 for the American PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography. In 1993, he published his first biography, Pursued by Furies: a Life of Malcolm Lowry, which became a New York Times bestseller.

The Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize was founded in memory of Malcolm Lowry and endowed by Gordon and his wife Ramdei Bowker.

Malcolm Lowry

Malcolm Lowry (1909-1957) was an English novelist, and short story writer known for his book, Under the Volcano, which was first published in 1947. Lowry almost went blind as a child until a successful operation restored his vision. He studied at the University of Cambridge and published his first novel first novel Ultramarine in 1933. He married his first wife, Jan Gabrial, in Paris in 1934. They moved to the United States of America together before his wife left him in 1937. During his lifetime, Lowry would work as a deckhand on a ship bound to China, would voluntarily admit himself to the psychiatric ward of Bellevue Hospital in New York City and would later be thrown into a Mexican jail after being suspected of being a Spanish spy. He met his second wife, Margerie Bonnner, in Hollywood whom he lived with up until his death.