By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
Book and Publishing Contest News of the Last 30 Days
Canada’s $75,000 Cundill History Prize Names Its 2025 Finalists
The £30,000 FT Schroders Business Book 2025 Shortlist
The £50,000 Booker Prize for Fiction’s 2025 Shortlist
The British Audio Awards’ First Shortlists: Winners in November
The €25,000 German Book Prize 2025 Shortlist
US National Book Awards: The 2025 Young People’s Literature Longlist
US National Book Awards: The 2025 Nonfiction Longlist
US National Book Awards: The 2025 Translated Literature Longlist
The £25,000 British Academy Book Prize: A 2025 Shortlist
Translation: First Winners of a New PEN-and-Booker Program
A Winner Is To Be Named November 4
Of all the key book and publishing awards to issue news during the run-up to Frankfurter Buchmesse (October 15 to 19), the Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction may be the most consequential.
At £50,000 (US$67,215) for its winner, this is among the best-paying of the socially relevant nonfiction award regimes, and the Baillie Gifford’s jurors’ usual sense for culturally accessible work—seriously meaningful, readable, and timely writings—can at times reflect that of Canada’s US$75,000 Cundill History Prize, although the latter has more academic roots at McGill University.
Of course, some of the most insightful nonfiction does come from the academy. But the Baillie Gifford, as an organization, has an eye for street-savvy pertinence, for the captivating literary dynamic in which the States-based Aspen Words Literary Prize has flourished under Adrienne Brodeur‘s tireless guidance.
The Baillie Gifford is also one of the very few awards programs to join the Booker prizes in publishing information on how its honored books fare in the marketplace, a substantial contribution to the effort to understand the actual benefit of book and publishing awards.
Toby Mundy
Baillie Gifford award executive director Toby Mundy—the London-based CEO of Aevitas Creative Management Limited—is perhaps less distracted than other award-programs leaders by such auxiliary attractions as book clubs based on the program’s lists and the wooing of “news presenters” for big ceremonies. Mundy is there for the intent of the service, and the service’s intent is on discerning strong work available.
There’s fun to be had here, too. The program has opened its shortlist announcement with a reference to “formidable female novelists” and “ghastly literary men,” possibly a gentle poke at gender-focused competition at a time when diversity is so clearly needed a consideration.
Those words come from Robbie Millen, chair of this year’s jurors, who writes, “Formidable female novelists, ghastly literary men, a faith-shaken poet, eunuchs, pirates, horny wolves, international terrorists . . . The six books on this year’s shortlist have real breadth in terms of subject matter and style.”
The Baillie Gifford Prize 2025 Longlist
In addition to the winner’s purse, there’s £5,000 (US$6,714) for each of the other five shortlistees, putting the total prize money for this award at £75,000 (US$100,710).
For our internationalist readership, a note that the publishers listed here are the UK publishers of the Baillie Gifford’s longlisted titles. In cases of books originally published in other markets before being released in the United Kingdom, you may have encountered different titles.)
| Author, Translator (Nationality) | Title | Publisher and/or Imprint |
| Jason Burke (British) | The Revolutionists: The Story of the Extremists Who Hijacked the 1970s |
Penguin Random House / Vintage / The Bodley Head |
| Helen Garner (Australian) | How to End a Story: Collected Diaries | Orion Publishing Group / Weidenfeld & Nicolson |
| Richard Holmes (British) | The Boundless Deep: Young Tennyson, Science, and the Crisis of Belief | HarperCollins / William Collins |
| Justin Marozzi (British) | Captives and Companions: A History of Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Islamic World | Penguin Random House / Allen Lane |
| Adam Weymouth (British) | Lone Wolf: Walking the Fault Lines of Europe | Penguin Random House / Hutchinson Heinemann / Cornerstone |
| Frances Wilson (British) | Electric Spark: The Enigma of Muriel Spark | Bloomsbury Publishing / Bloomsbury Circus |
The Initial Pool Topped 350 Books
In addition to chair Robbie Millen, the literary editor of The Times and Sunday Times, the 2025 jury panel comprises:
- Historian Pratinav Anil;
- Journalist Inaya Folarin Iman;
- Cultural historian, biographer and novelist Lucy Hughes-Hallett, a previous winner of the Baillie Gifford;
- The Economist‘s deputy culture editor Rachel Lloyd; and
- Author and biographer Peter Parker.
The jury’s selection of 12 longlistees was made from a starting field of more than 350 books published between November 1 and (upcoming) October 31. That number appears to put the submission figure slightly ahead of last year’s.
The 2024 winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction was Question 7 from Penguin Random House. As was reported for The Times in London by David Sanderson on Thursday (October 2), Flanagan has declined to accept his purse as the 2inner of the 2024 Baillie Gifford. He has made it clear that he wouldn’t take the £50,000 unless the program’s name-sponsor agreed to divest itself of hydrocarbon investments.
Mundy has said that the money, rejected by Flanagan, will be contributed to a literary charity.
The prize, originally known as the Samuel Johnson, was first awarded in 1999. For any translated work recognized by the jurors, 75 percent of the available prize money will be awarded to the author and 25 percent will be awarded to the translator(s).
More from Publishing Perspectives on the international publishing business’ myriad book and industry awards is here, more on the United Kingdom’s market is here, more on the Baillie Gifford Prize is here, and more on nonfiction is here.
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