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Laura Wainwright shortlisted for Seamus Heaney Prize 2026

Graphic showing The Storm's Flora against the Seamus Heaney Prize branding

Congratulations to Laura Wainwright whose debut poetry collection The Storm’s Flora is on the shortlist for the Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize 2026.

Judged by Leontia Flynn, Nick Laird and Karen Solie she’s one of 5 shortlistees alongside Isabell Baafi, Dean Browne, Sasha Debvec-McKenny and Catherine-Esther Cowie. Speaking about this year’s prize, Leonita Flynn said: “As the world continues to experience political turbulence, The Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize allows us to get back in touch with the careful attention to language by which we might reset it.”

The winner will be announced during the Seamus Heaney Centre’s annual Poetry Summer School, at the Award Night readings in June 2026.

Our poets are on fire this year and we’re keeping our fingers crossed for all of them!

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Two poets shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year 2026

Graphic showing the covers of Hotel Amour and the Storm's Flora alongside the Wales Book of the Year shortlist logo

Congratulations to Deryn Rees-Jones and Laura Wainwright who have both been shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year 2026 in the Poetry Category alongside Jeremy Over (Carcanet).

Deryn is shortlisted for her collection Hôtel Amour – a sequel to her previous collection Erato (also shortlisted in 2020) –which explores the complexities of memory and memorialisation, desire and the body and poetry’s place in a hostile world. Laura is shortlisted for her debut collection The Storm’s Flora, a powerful exploration of resilience in the face of ecological and human crises.

The full shortlists for the Welsh and English awards were announced on Sunday 10 May. This year’s judges for the English-language award are Zoë Skoulding, Catrin Kean, Shirish Kulkarni and Julie Golden. Speaking about the shortlist, Zoë said: “It was exhilarating to read such wonderful writing across all the categories, and painfully difficult to narrow the choice down to our final selection. We had to keep asking ourselves what makes an extraordinary book – and this is a question with as many answers as there are readers.”

Voting is now open for the People’s Choice Award where readers can vote for their favourite books on the shortlist. You can give Deryn and Laura your support by voting on the Nation.Cymru website.

Vote here

The winners in each category and the two overall winners of Wales Book of the Year in Welsh and English will be announced at the award ceremony at Galeri in Carnarfon on Thursday 9 July. You can find out more about the prize and the full shortlists on the Literature Wales website.