Shortlist Announced for the 2018 Adventure Writing Prize

We are delighted to announce the shortlist for the annual Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize, for Best Published Novel. 

The six-strong shortlist is as follows:

Now in its third year, the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize is an annual event. This year we are celebrating the best adventure novels published between 1st January 2017 and 30th April 2018. The Prize is open to writers of any nationality, writing in English.

Under guidance from an expert judging panel, the £15,000 first prize for a published novel will be awarded at a ceremony in September 2018, at London’s Stationers’ Hall.

The 2018 judging panel comprises Steve Winter, award-winning National Geographic Photographer; Alex Crawford, Special Correspondent at Sky News; Kevin Conroy Scott, Literary Agent of Wilbur Smith at Tibor Jones & Associates; Stef Penney, best-selling author and winner of the 2017 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize; and Kirsty Coventry, Zimbabwean Olympian and Founder of the Kirsty Coventry Academy.

Niso Smith, Founder of The Wilbur and Niso Smith Foundation, says: 

“We are thrilled with this year’s shortlist. Each of the authors weaves their own form of magic, transporting us across the world and through different times. We glimpse the opulence of the 1920s Indian Raj, trek the harsh wilds of the Scottish borderlands, and sail the Caribbean seas.

The stories are gripping and the descriptions vivid, with action, danger, romance and heartbreak that both speeds across the course of a few weeks and gently spans a lifetime.”

She continues, “We are overjoyed to see so many writers telling stories with the power to take us away to a new place.”

The Foundation also awards recognition to a writer for the Best Unpublished Manuscript, and to the Author of Tomorrow – a writer aged 21 years and under who has submitted a short piece of adventure writing. With hundreds of entries submitted from over 30 countries, we are delighted that so many aspiring adventure writers are getting involved. The shortlist for these categories will be announced at the end of May.

For more information on the shortlisted authors over the coming months, follow The Wilbur and Niso Smith Foundation on Facebook and Twitter.