By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
Winners To Be Named November 27
In its 15th year of operation the United Kingdom’s Polari Prize program has the sponsorship of Arts Council England for a showcase that is to include events in Bradford, Brighton, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Huddersfield, Leeds, Manchester and Newcastle. Also sponsoring, in a three-year arrangement, is EasyJet Holidays.
Shortlists are to be announced in late September and winners—there are two prizes in this program—are expected to be announced on November 27 at the British Library.
The main Polari Prize and the Polari First Book Prize for a debut publication are annual. A children’s and young-adult prize was inaugurated in 2023, and its set to be a triennial occurrence.
The London-based public relations consultancy FMcM (which provides Polari’s account services free of charge) is again sponsoring the Polari First Book Prize purse of £1,000 (US$1,034).
The £2,000 (US$2,669) purse for the main Polari Book Prize is again funded by DHH Literary Agency.
Probably the best-known author highlighted by this year’s longlists is Alan Hollinghurst, who won the Booker Prize for Fiction in 2004 for The Line of Beauty (Pan Macmillan / Picador), and then returned to be longlisted by the Booker in 2011 for The Stranger’s Child (also Pan Macmillan / Picador). His Polari longlisting is for his new Our Evenings, published by Pan Macmillan / Picador in October.
It’s also notable that Andrew McMillan, a poet whose second poetry collection, Playtime, was the inaugural Polari winner in 2019, is on the main longlist this time with his first novel, Pity (Jamie Byng’s Canongate).
The Polari Book Prize 2025 Longlist
- Earth by John Boyne (Penguin Random House / Doubleday)
- Like Water Like Sea by Olumide Popoola (Bibi Bakare-Yusuf’s Cassava Republic Press)
- Nude Against a Rock by Robert Hamberger (Waterloo Press)
- May Day by Jackie Kay (Pan Macmillan / Picador)
- Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst (Pan Macmillan / Picador)
- Person Unlimited by Dean Atta (Canongate)
- Pity by Andrew McMillan (Canongate)
- Girls, Etc. by Rhian Elizabeth (Broken Sleep Books)
- The Last Doorbell by William Parker (Deixis Press)
- Lifting Off by Karen McLeod (Muswell Press)
- Calling My Deadname Home: The Trans Bear Diaries by Avi Ben Zeev (Muswell Press)
- 3,000 Lesbians Go to York by Jane Traies (Tollington Press)
The Polari First Book Prize 2025 Longlist
- Isaac by Curtis Garner (Verve Books)
- Revolutionary Acts: Love & Brotherhood in Black Gay Britain by Jason Okundaye (Faber)
- Queer as Folklore by Sacha Coward (Boundless)
- I Cannot Be Good Until You Say It by Sanah Ashan (Bloomsbury)
- Spoilt Creatures by Amy Twigg (Hachette Books UK / Tinder Press)
- Bloodsongs by Mae Diansangu (Tap Salt Eerie)
- A Bookshop of One’s Own by Jane Cholmeley (Mudlark)
- Unsuitable: A History of Lesbian Fashion by Eleanor Medhurst (Hurst)
- The Diaries of Mr Lucas by Hugo Greenhalgh (Atlantic Books)
- Mongrel by Hanako Footman (Footnote Press)
- Impossible Heat by Chiara Maguire (Bad Betty Press)
- A Place of Our Own by June Thomas (Hachette UK / Little Brown)
More from Publishing Perspectives on publishing and book awards is here, more on the United Kingdom’s market is here, and more on LGBTQ+ issues and publishing is here.
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