Longlist

Highland Book Prize 2025 Longlist Announced

The longlist for the Highland Book Prize 2025 has been announced by the Highland Society of London and Moniack Mhor, Scotland’s Creative Writing Centre.

This year’s longlist has strong representation from books that reflect a collective conscious awareness of the Highland landscape and our place in it, with non-fiction titles from Kerri Andrews, Dominic Hinde, Mandy Haggith, Christina Riley, Roy Dennis, and Neil Ansell, and poetry from Taylor Strickland and Colin Bramwell.

Each of the fiction titles on the list explore the way Highland history affects the lives of those who are born or live in the area, with work from Graeme Macrae Burnet, Sally Magnusson, and Mòrag Anna NicNèill, with an additional Gaelic title from Petra Johana Poncarová who has collected for the first time poetry and prose from the late Derick Thomson.

This annual award celebrates literature that comes from the rich landscape and culture of the Scottish Highlands and Islands. It is open to books of any genre written by authors who live in the Highlands or were born there, as well as books whose content is Highland themed.

Twelve books were selected by a team of volunteer readers with a diverse range of backgrounds and experience, in conjunction with Moniack Mhor, the Highland Society of London, and the 2025 Judging Panel, who are: Jen Hadfield, poet and essayist, and winner of the 2024 Windham Campbell Prize; acclaimed multi-award winning fiction writer Cynan Jones; and Peter Mackay, poet, lecturer and broadcaster, and Scotland’s current Makar (national poet).

Each of the longlisted titles will be celebrated in a series of events supported by the William Grant Foundation. The shortlist will be announced in May 2026, and the winning announcement is to follow in June 2026.

Read more about each of the titles below:

• An Staran, Petra Johana Poncarová

(Acair, Gaelic Poetry & Prose)

• Benbecula, Graeme Macrae Burnet

(Birlinn, Fiction)

• Drifting North: Finding a sustainable future in Scotland’s past, Dominic Hinde

(Manchester University Press, Non-fiction)

• Dwell Time, Taylor Strickland

(Tapsalteerie, Poetry)

• The Edge of Silence: In Search of the Disappearing Sounds of Nature, Neil Ansell

(Birlinn, Non-fiction)

• Fo Fhasgadh Beinn Chianabhail, Mòrag Anna NicNèill

(Acair, Gaelic Fiction)

• Fower Pessoas, Colin Bramwell

(Carcanet, Poetry)

• The Highland Cow and the Horse of the Woods: How Highland cattle can help save the capercaillie, Roy Dennis

(Porto Press, Non-fiction)

• Looking Down at the Stars: Life beneath the waves, Christina Riley

(Saraband, Non-fiction)

• The Lost Elms, Mandy Haggith

(Headline, Non-fiction)

• Pathfinding: On Walking, Motherhood and Freedom, Kerri Andrews

(Elliott and Thomson, Non-fiction)

• The Shapeshifter’s Daughter, Sally Magnusson

(John Murray Press, Fiction)