Delighted to learn that Joanna Pocock’s Greyhound (Fitzcarraldo) is among five books short-listed for the 2026 Ilse Schwepcke Prize for women’s travel writing. Also on the list for the annual £5,000 award — founded in 2024 in memory of the director at Haus Publishing, a champion of travel writing and a feminist — is the Australian Hannah Kent’s love letter to Iceland, Always Home, Always Homesick (Picador). The other books were new to me: Shifting Sands: A Human History of the Sahara by Judith Scheele (Profile); Tea and Grit: A Bicycle Journey Along The Silk Road by Helen Watson (Bradt); and Frontierlands by Hazel Sheffield (Transworld), which is about abandoned, neglected places in Britain that are being revived by community action.
The winner will be named at the Frankfurt Book Fair on October 9.