2026 Shortlist
We are thrilled to reveal the shortlist for the 2026 Ilse Schwepcke Prize for women’s travel writing.
Over the summer, our jurors selected five execeptional books to make the shortlist. These remarkable authors have displayed the adventurous spirit, literary finesse, and perceptive insight that the Prize was founded to celebrate.
Shop the shortlist on Bookshop.org.
Always Home, Always Homesick
Hannah Kent
When she was seventeen years old, Hannah Kent travelled to Iceland from Australia. She’d never seen snow before, didn’t speak a word of Icelandic. All she knew was that she wanted to have an experience – to soak up something of the world. Soon she found herself isolated in a remote part of Iceland in a dark winter. It was a gruelling experience, but she quickly fell in love with the country: with its brutally beautiful landscapes and with its people. On returning home, with images of Iceland's towering glaciers and windswept tundras in her dreams, Hannah began to write. Now, as a mother and a wife, she looks back to that extraordinary year in Iceland, in ‘Always Home, Always Homesick’.
Greyhound
Joanna Pocock
In 2006, in the wake of several miscarriages, Joanna Pocock travelled by Greyhound bus across the US from Detroit to Los Angeles. Seventeen years later, now in her 50s, she undertakes the same journey, revisiting the same cities, edgelands, highways and motels in the footsteps of the few women writers – Simone de Beauvoir, Ethel Mannin and Irma Kurtz – who chronicled their own road trips across the US. In ‘Greyhound’, Pocock explores the overlap of place and memory, the individual against the communal, and the privatization of public space as she navigates two very different landscapes – an earlier, less atomized America, and a current one mired in inequality, as it teeters on the brink of environmental catastrophe. Her focus is on the built-upon environment: the rivers of tarmac, the illuminated gas stations, the sprawling suburbs and the sites of extraction created specifically to fuel contemporary life. Combining memoir, reportage, environmental writing and literary criticism, ‘Greyhound’ is a moving and immersive book that captures an America in the throes of late capitalism with all its beauty, horror and complexity.
Shifting Sands
Judith Scheele
In this sweeping account, Judith Scheele reveals the rich history and complex reality of the world's largest hot desert. Drawing on decades of research, and years spent living in the region, Scheele leads us from the ancient Roman Empire through the bloody colonial era to the geopolitics of the present – and the race for resources that will define the future. The Sahara covers parts of eleven countries, and Scheele follows in the footsteps and tyre-tracks of the many people who cross the desert, taking us into the homes, mosques, palm groves and battlefields where history is written, spoken and remade. The result is a masterful portrait of the Sahara. Encompassing the geology, religions, peoples and politics that shape and fracture the region, ‘Shifting Sands’ tells the immersive story of a place whose future holds implications for us all.
Frontierlands
Hazel Sheffield
'Frontierlands' are Britain's forgotten places. Silt-filled harbours, overgrown forests, sunken railway tracks and empty buildings. All once economic engines, now abandoned by investors and the state. But they are home to local communities, and amongst them, some remarkable pioneers working together to repair, rebuild and prepare for the future. Hazel Sheffield takes her readers on a journey that begins at the coastline and travels inward via hoardings and railway arches, factories, streets and neighbourhoods to our homes. Moving from Watchet harbour in the South West to Gateshead in the North East, from Lancashire to London and the South East, she introduces us to the people who are acting to shape their own destinies – people with first-hand knowledge of the problems Britain faces and with clear ideas how to make things better. This is a book about regeneration, reclaiming power, and the hope that comes from community action. About people questioning how the world works and determined to do things differently in the face of economic upheaval and climate crisis. People learning to build a new world, challenging us all to think about how we should live in the face of certain change. Immersive and inspiring, ‘Frontierlands’ challenges us to reconnect with and reclaim our environment, showing that it is possible to regenerate, reskill and create opportunities for industry, and to address the challenges of climate change.
Hazel Watson
Tea and Grit
In 2009, while the US government is hunting down Osama bin Laden in the Middle East, Helen Watson and her husband Ed set off on a cycling expedition from Glasgow to China. Driven by a desire to understand the world beyond the media portrayal of the ‘Axis of Evil’, the couple pedal 15,000km along the Silk Road – ancient trade routes undergoing rapid modernisation. Crossing deserts and mountains, minefields and military zones, they reach Muslim China via Syria, Turkey, Iran and Central Asia. Plagued by sandstorms, overzealous officials and endless punctures, Helen and Ed camp with Bedouin, sleep in farmers’ houses, and are hosted by students and local dignitaries. They are waylaid with hundreds of cups of tea and interrogated about Western culture…and marriage. Soon after the couple return home, the Arab spring breaks, and the world Helen and Ed visited is plunged into war and unrest. ‘Tea and Grit’ is a rich and compassionate exploration of cultures too often misrepresented. Featuring privileged glimpses into the lives of women rarely given a voice, it is a unique account of the 21st-century Silk Road – and a reminder of the importance of drinking tea with strangers.
From the jurors
‘Reading the many books submitted for the 2026 Ilse Schwepcke Prize has been literary nourishment of the very finest kind: savoury, varied and endlessly surprising. Travel writing embraces many approaches; the best of it expands the mind and extends our horizons. The Ilse Schwepcke Prize celebrates travel writing by women, a genre that is unique in the narratives it sets forth, the details it notices, and the adventures it offers. In 2026, the unifying characteristics of the wonderful shortlist unanimously agreed by the judges are courage, compassion, engagement and integrity. We – and you – accompany the shortlisted writers for thousands of miles, in an arc that encompasses Iceland and Africa, Central Asia, North America and England, and our understanding of the world and our humanity are deepened by each and every one of these five books.’
Listen to 2025 shortlisted author Viv Groskop and Prize co-founder Dr Barbara Schwepcke talk with Anita Rani about the rise of women’s travel writing, how it’s different in the digital age, and how women write differently to men on BBC Womans Hour here.