The Wainwright Prize · award year
Wainwright Prize 2021
The 2021 Wainwright Prize went to English Pastoral: An Inheritance by James Rebanks (Nature Writing) and Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake (Writing on Global Conservation). 13 books made the shortlist and 25 the longlist across 2 categories.
Winners
Nature Writing
- English Pastoral: An Inheritancesource (opens in a new tab)
Writing on Global Conservation
- Entangled Lifesource (opens in a new tab)
Shortlist
Nature Writing
- Featherhoodsource (opens in a new tab)
- I Belong Heresource (opens in a new tab)
- Seed to Dustsource (opens in a new tab)
- The Screaming Skysource (opens in a new tab)
- The Wild Silencesource (opens in a new tab)
- Thin Placessource (opens in a new tab)
Writing on Global Conservation
- A Life on Our Planetsource (opens in a new tab)
- Fathomssource (opens in a new tab)
- Islands of Abandonmentsource (opens in a new tab)
- Net Zero: How We Stop Causing Climate Changesource (opens in a new tab)
- Under a White Skysource (opens in a new tab)
Longlist
Nature Writing
- Birdsong in a Time of Silencesource (opens in a new tab)
- Into the Tangled Banksource (opens in a new tab)
- Skylarks with Rosiesource (opens in a new tab)
- The Circling Skysource (opens in a new tab)
- The Stubborn Light of Things: A Nature Diarysource (opens in a new tab)
- Vesper Flightssource (opens in a new tab)
Writing on Global Conservation
- A World on the Wingsource (opens in a new tab)
- Ice Riverssource (opens in a new tab)
- Riders on the Stormsource (opens in a new tab)
- The New Climate Warsource (opens in a new tab)
- The Reindeer Chroniclessource (opens in a new tab)
- What If We Stopped Pretending?source (opens in a new tab)
About the Wainwright Prize
Wainwright Prize, 2014-2025, every book category. Year is the prize year the body uses (shortlist in summer, winner announced in August/September). Categories as the body names them: Nature Writing (the only category 2014-2019, then called the Wainwright Golden Beer Book Prize for nature and UK travel writing); Writing on Global Conservation (2020-2021), Writing on Conservation (2022-2024) and Conservation Writing (2025) are the same strand under its successive names; Children's Writing on Nature and Conservation (2022-2024); from 2025 Illustrative Books, Children's Fiction, Children's Non-Fiction and Children's Picture Books. Levels: Winner, Shortlist (rest of the shortlist, including highly commended books), Longlist (longlisted, not shortlisted). The 2025 overall Book of the Year awards went to category winners and are not separate rows. Sources: wainwrightprize.com news posts and the 2025 shortlist page. Longlists are included only for 2021-2025, where the body's pages still list them; earlier longlists (2016-2020) were announced but those pages are gone, so those years have winner and shortlist only. 2014-2017 winner and shortlists come from Wikipedia's Wainwright Prize article (fallback), because the body's shortlist pages for those years return 404 and web.archive.org was unreachable from this machine. Authors only: illustrators credited with 'illustrated by' are left out; co-creators the body credits with 'and/&' are joined with ' and '. Expected counts are the books on the longlist page where one exists, otherwise the shortlist page.
Organization: The Wainwright Prize. Years are award years, which can differ from publication years. Official site (opens in a new tab)
Shares the most books with
- British Book Awards 11 shared books
- Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 9 shared books
- Goodreads Choice Awards 8 shared books
- Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence 6 shared books