Published Date: 25/02/2026
London Writers Centre is excited to reveal the judges for the Wellcome Collection Non-Fiction Awards. The project aims to find and support writers from underrepresented groups, who have a big idea for a non-fiction book for general readers, that engages with the themes of health and being human.
Since launching the programme in 2022, ten awardees have been agented with three book deals including Rageshri Dhairyawan’s Unheard, Aimee Cliff’s How to Read Minds and Masud Husain’s Our Brains, Our Selves, winner of the Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize 2025.
Applications are open from 25 February to 8 April 2026. Wellcome Collection’s Fran Barrie and London Writers Centre’s Bobby Nayyar are running a free online seminar on Monday 2 March, 7pm-8pm for potential applicants.
The judges are authors Kerry Hudson and Micha Frazer-Carroll and the literary agent Eli Keren.
Kerry Hudson was born in Aberdeen. Growing up in a succession of council estates, B&Bs and caravan parks provided her with a keen eye for idiosyncratic behaviour, material for life, and a love of travel. Kerry’s first novel, TONY HOGAN BOUGHT ME AN ICE-CREAM FLOAT BEFORE HE STOLE MY MA (Chatto & Windus), was published in July 2012 and was shortlisted for eight literary prizes, including the Guardian First Book Award and Green Carnation Prize, and won Scottish First Book of the Year. Her second novel, THIRST, was published by Chatto & Windus in July 2014 before being shortlisted for the Green Carnation Prize. Her first work of nonfiction, LOWBORN: Growing Up, Getting Away and Returning to Britain’s Poorest Towns (Chatto & Windus, 2019) became a Sunday Times bestseller and was chosen by BBC Radio 4 as their Book of the Week, by The Guardian and Spectator as a Book of the Year, and by Stylist as a Book of the Decade. A follow-up, NEWBORN: Running Away, Breaking with the Past, Building a New Family, was published by Chatto & Windus in February 2024. In 2020, Kerry was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Micha Frazer-Carroll is a journalist and the author of Mad World: The Politics of Mental Health. Her work appears regularly in The Guardian, the Independent and Novara Media. She specialises in disability, mental health and race, and has held positions at gal-dem, The Runnymede Trust, Healing Justice London and the National Survivor User Network.
Eli Keren is a literary agent at the Curious Minds Agency, an agency dedicated to expert-led evidence-based non-fiction, which he joined in 2024 after eight years at United Agents. Before starting his publishing career he had been a research scientist designing and synthesising novel drugs, and science books remain a particular passion of his. He mostly works with experts, academics and researchers on ideas-led books in the fields of smart science and current affairs, focussing on health & wellness, medicine and popular psychology alongside feminist and LGBTQ+ books. He enjoys books written by writers who are obsessed with a niche subject and skilled enough communicators to make others fall in love with their subject too, and is always on the lookout for books that are going to change the world for the better.
Applications will be open from midday on Tuesday 25 February 2026 and close at 5pm on Wednesday 8 April 2026. Please visit the project page for more details.
