Grace Nichols Wins the 2026 Royal Society of Literature Pioneer Prize
Poet Grace Nichols has won the 2026 Royal Society of Literature Pioneer prize, a £10,000 award announced on 3 November 2026. The prize, given by the Royal Society of Literature (RSL), goes to women writers over 60 who broke through at a time when the literary world was less open to them, according to The Guardian.
Nichols is 76. She was born in Guyana and moved to the UK in 1977. Her collection I Is a Long-Memoried Woman won the Commonwealth poetry prize in 1983, a book that has stayed in print and in classrooms for decades since.
The Pioneer prize rotates between literary forms each year. This year's award was for poetry, which is why a poet was the obvious choice for the honour. The judging panel was led by Ruth Borthwick, chair of English PEN, the writers' organisation that campaigns for free expression.
The prize has its own history. It was set up by Bernardine Evaristo, who was RSL president at the time. Evaristo gave the £100,000 she received from the 2025 Women's Prize outstanding contribution award to fund the Pioneer prize for ten years. The Women's Prize is the annual award for fiction by women, and its outstanding contribution award recognises a career's worth of work.
The first Pioneer prize went to novelist, playwright and activist Maureen Duffy. Nichols now follows her as the second name on the list.
The Royal Society of Literature was founded in 1820 and describes itself as a charity led by writers. It has more than 800 Fellows, writers and others who have been elected to its community for their contribution to literature across the UK. The charity's registered number is 213962.
For readers who have not met Nichols's work, her poetry often draws on the rhythms of Caribbean speech and on the experience of moving between Guyana and Britain. The RSL's award now puts her name alongside earlier winners whose careers were built against long odds. The prize carries £10,000, and it is funded for ten years from the Evaristo donation.
