About
The winner of the 2021 Deborah Rogers Foundation Writers Award is Mathelinda Nabugodi for The Trembling Hand: Reflections of a Black Woman in the Romantic Archive (non-fiction). This was announced on Tuesday 7th December on social media.
The two runners-up are Yasmine Awwad for The Shrills and Sophie Meadows for The Frog. Both titles are works of fiction and each author will receive £1,000.
Colm Tóibín, Deepa Anappara, Anna James and Ingrid Persaud, the judges of the 2021 Deborah Rogers Foundation Writers Award, made their shortlist selection from a longlist of twelve. This longlist was chosen by agents within Rogers Coleridge & White, after reading a staggering 983 entries.
Read the complete announcement on the Writer's Award page.
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A literary agent all her professional life, Deborah Rogers (1938-2014) set up her own agency in 1967, and twenty years later formed Rogers Coleridge & White with Gill Coleridge and Pat White. One of the most influential literary agents of her generation, Deborah was renowned for her taste, her loyalty and her immense generosity in the support she gave to authors. At the 2014 London Book Fair, Deborah was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award in International Publishing, the first agent to have received the honour. Her sudden death a few weeks later sent a shockwave through the world of publishing and the many writers, publishers and agents whose lives she had touched.
Deborah’s particular genius lay in identifying and supporting talented young people. The Deborah Rogers Foundation (DRF) has therefore been set up in her memory to continue to seek out and support emerging talent specifically by means of two biennial awards:-
The Writers Award which gives £10,000 to an unpublished writer to enable them to complete a first book, and The DRF David Miller Bursary which offers work placements in publishing houses and literary agencies worldwide together with £10,000 to help a young agent or publisher gain international work experience.
The Board chaired by Lord Berkeley of Knighton, Deborah’s widower, comprises people who knew and loved Deborah, including RCW colleagues, writers Ian McEwan and William Fiennes and friends from the publishing world.
For more information about these awards please go to the Writers Award page or the David Miller Bursary page.