London Writers Centre and Wellcome Collection are delighted to announce the six writers awarded a place on the Wellcome Collection Non-Fiction Awards 2026/27 development programme. The Awardees are all working on books on health and being human and will be taking part in an intensive ten-month programme to develop their ideas into a full-length non-fiction proposal and sample chapters. Awarded writers have a breadth of experience in health and medicine from the personal to the professional.
Our six writers are: a professor in clinical data science and cardiologist; a neuroscientist born and raised in Gaza; a midwife who specialises in trauma-informed care; a writer and former literary agent; an award-winning journalist and stem cell advocate; and a consultant in planetary health. Their projects cover a range of subjects from an examination of apathy in a time of war viewed through a neuroscientific lens, to a personal examination of the rare intersex condition, and an investigation into the scandal and trauma of the UK’s maternity system.
The programme offers each writer:
- £2,000 bursary
- travel and access fund
- mentoring with an author
- five masterclasses on writing non-fiction
- insight and industry days
- the opportunity to meet with agents.
The awarded writers and their projects are:
- Amitava Banerjee, Wood for the Trees: Moving Health and Public Health Back to the Whole
- Bahaa Attaallah, Autopsy of Apathy: On War, Medicine, and Lives that Do Not Count
- Emily Flannery, Failure to Progress
- Gabriella Docherty, Passing as Human: Diagnosis, Shame and the Performance of Normality
- Hannah Partos, Lifegivers
- Omar Hallab, All at Once: Planetary Health from a Collapsing State
Since launching the programme in 2022, twelve writers have participated with five book deals including Masud Husain’s Our Brains, Our Selves, winner of the Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize 2025, Unheard by Rageshri Dhairyawan, How to Read Minds by Aimee Cliff, and Speculum by Shema Tariq, due to be published by Viking in 2028.
Fran Barrie, Publisher at Wellcome Collection said; “This year’s cohort of writers grapple with pressing questions of identity, empathy, care, climate collapse, and so much more. In different ways, they promise to illuminate what it is to be human. We’re excited to support them in turning their ideas into fleshed out book proposals over the coming year.”
Ruth Harrison, Director of London Writers Centre said: “We’re delighted to support these six exceptional writers and continue our partnership with Wellcome Collection with a programme which has already resulted in five book deals with more announcements to come. This year, alongside our development work, we will be continuing to run a public programme, opening up much needed free and accessible opportunities for aspiring non-fiction writers from across the UK to get support.”
Bahaa Attaallah, Awardee, said: “As a clinician and scientist, I study and write about many aspects of human cognition from the outside, mostly as an observer or experimenter addressing an academic audience. This project asks me to turn that inquiry inward: to write more personally, for a wider readership, and in a register that academic work does not allow. I am grateful to the Wellcome Collection Non-Fiction Awards for the time, structure, and editorial guidance to develop this book, and for the chance to learn alongside a group of writers working at the intersection of health and being human.”
Hannah Partos, Awardee, said: “I’m delighted to have been chosen for this award for my work-in-progress book about organ and tissue donation, having been fascinated by the subject since my life was saved by a stem cell donor. As a longtime fan of the Wellcome Collection, it feels very special to have the organisation’s support, along with the London Writers Centre. I’ve already enjoyed doing research for my project in the Wellcome Library, delving into archives to investigate the grassroots 1970s women campaigners who fought to establish the world’s first ever bone marrow register.”
Click here for more details on the Wellcome Collection Non-Fiction Awards.
