‘A trailblazer in the truest sense’: poet Grace Nichols wins £10,000 Pioneer prize
The Guyana-born, British-based writer takes home the Royal Society of Literature prize honouring women writers over 60 who have broken barriers The poet Grace Nichols has been named the winner of the 2026 Royal Society of Literature Pioneer prize, a £10,000 award that recognises women writers over 60 who broke through at a time when the literary world was less open to them. Nichols, 76, who was born in Guyana and…
Key points
- Grace Nichols, 76, has won the 2026 Royal Society of Literature Pioneer prize worth £10,000.
- The prize honours women writers over 60 who broke through when the literary world was less open.
- Nichols' next adult collection, The Tracks of My Name, will be published on 19 November.
The Guyana-born, British-based poet Grace Nichols has won the 2026 Royal Society of Literature Pioneer prize, a £10,000 award for women writers over 60 who broke through when the literary world was less open to them. Nichols, 76, was born in Guyana and moved to the UK in 1977.
She made her name with I Is a Long-Memoried Woman, which won the Commonwealth poetry prize in 1983, and The Fat Black Woman's Poems, published the following year. Her poems have been GCSE set texts for decades, and she has also written extensively for children.
How the prize began
The Pioneer prize was set up last year by the then RSL president Bernardine Evaristo, who donated the £100,000 she received from the 2025 Women's prize outstanding contribution award to fund it for 10 years. It rotates between forms each year and was given for poetry this year. The inaugural winner was the novelist, playwright and activist Maureen Duffy, who died in May.
I am honoured and delighted to have the RSL Pioneer prize bestowed on me and grateful to poetry for all that it's given me
— Grace Nichols
What the judges said
Ruth Borthwick, chair of English PEN, led the judging panel and called Nichols "one of our most important contemporary poets", saying she had developed her own poetic language mixing Creole and standard English. Fellow judge Sarah Howe described her as "a legend, a trailblazer in the truest sense".
Nichols said she was surprised to get the call from Borthwick and was honoured and delighted. She is a vice-president of the RSL and received the Queen's gold medal for poetry in 2021. Her next collection for adults, The Tracks of My Name, will be published on 19 November, and she will be celebrated at an event at the British Library on 1 March 2027.
