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 now closed for submissions and will re-open in Autumn 2026.

The 2026 Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize shortlist

Jadelin Gangbo for Ground (Jacaranda Books)

Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin for Ordinary Saints (Manilla Press, Bonnier Books UK)

Salma Ibrahim for Salutation Road (Mantle, Pan Macmillan)

Abdulrazak Gurnah for Theft (Bloomsbury Publishing)

Kimberly Campanello for Use the Words You Have (Somesuch Editions)

There is a wondrous world in this shortlist. Five authors have written novels whispering with life, from Somalia to Brittany, Congo-Brazzaville to Ireland and Zanzibar to Italy – with three stops in modern London. Ground is an astonishing and heartfelt exploration of the refugee experience in a Europe becoming more hostile. Theft is an extraordinary tale of ambition and hope in Dar-es-Salaam. Use the Words You Have is a profound and intense survey of teenage love through a language barrier. Salutation Road is an ambitious and thoughtful reconciliation of the migrant heart. Ordinary Saints is an insightful look at the tangle of queerness and faith in our bewildering time. These books deserve to be celebrated for their warmth, wisdom, poise and beautiful writing.
— Soula Emmanuel, 2026 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.

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

With thanks, the judges of the 2026 Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize:

Soula Emmanuel

Soula Emmanuel was born in Dublin to an Irish mother and a Greek father. She studied at universities in Ireland and Sweden, emerging with a master’s in demography. Her debut novel Wild Geese was published by Footnote Press and the Feminist Press in 2023. In 2024, it won the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Fiction, and the Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize at the UK Society of Authors Awards. She has had work dramatised for BBC Radio 4. She currently lives on Ireland’s east coast.

Anietie Isong

Anietie Isong has worked as a corporate writer for some of the biggest brands in the world. His first novel, Radio Sunrise, won the 2018 McKitterick Prize. His collection of short stories, Someone Like Me, published in 2020, won the first annual Headlight Review Chapbook Prize for Prose Fiction. In 2021, Isong’s essay was included in Of This Our Country, a ground-breaking anthology celebrating acclaimed Nigerian writers. He has spoken at the Aké Arts and Book Festival, Henley Literary Festival, Marlborough Literature Festival, among other literary festivals. Isong holds a PhD in New Media and Writing.

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.

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)
Isabella Hammad for Enter Ghost (Jonathan Cape)

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.