Dr Hannah Lowe has been announced as one of the two 2024 winners of the Eccles Centre & Hay Festival Writer's Award for her lyrical, hybrid memoir Moy: In Search of Nelsa Lowe.
Dr Lowe, a Reader in Creative Writing at Brunel University London, and Alia Trabucco Zerán have each been awarded £20,000 and up to a year's writing residency at the British Library to develop their forthcoming books using the Library’s Americas collections, as well as the opportunity to showcase their finished work at Hay Festival events in the UK and Latin America.
Now in its 13th year, the Writer’s Award is given annually to two writers in the early stages of a new book relating to the Americas. The Eccles Centre for American Studies works to increase awareness and use of the British Library's extensive collections related to the United States, Canada and the Caribbean – and the prize includes the opportunity for the authors to work with the Eccles Centre to develop and facilitate activities and events related to their research at the British Library.
Dr Lowe is a poet, memoirist and academic whose work is focused largely on the legacies of the British Empire – in particular, her writing on the Chinese-Caribbean and the historicising of the Empire Windrush. She has published three full poetry collections: Chick, Chan and The Kids, which was nominated for the TS Eliot Prize and won both the Costa Poetry Award and the overall Costa Book of the Year Award. Her memoir Long Time No See was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week.
Moy: In Search of Nelsa Lowe stood out for the judging panel who were reviewing the six-strong shortlist. It uses the intimate story of her Chinese Jamaican aunt – a folk healer, amputee, hostess of a famous waterfront restaurant, and ‘madam’ of a portside brothel – as a device for exploring the history of the Chinese in Jamaica, women’s sexual labour, and the culture of folk healing. Speaking when the shortlist was announced, the judges said: "We were enthralled by Hannah Lowe’s inventive approach to conjuring Nelsa, her Afro-Chinese Jamaican aunt. Remarkably, Lowe evokes Nelsa through a single portrait photo and along the way excavates other marginalised women whose lives are rarely noted in official archives."
The award-winners were revealed at a reception at the British Library. Polly Russell, Head of the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library, said: "We could not be more excited to support Hannah Lowe and Alia Trabucco as the 2024 Eccles–Hay Writer’s Award winners. Both their projects – one focussed on the Chinese population of the Caribbean and the other on Latin American identity – promise to explore untapped British Library Americas collections and to uncover aspects of Latin American and Caribbean culture and history that have been much overlooked. We look forward to welcoming them to the Library and supporting their work as they delve into the Library’s rich holdings."
Cristina Fuentes La Roche, Hay Festival International Director, added: "We are delighted to award the grants to two writers that explore shifting identities, belonging and its meanings on today´s world, and that would link up their literary project with the work of amazing writers and researchers from the British Library archives."
Dr Lowe commented: "I'm delighted to have won this award, which offers a sustained period of archival research and curatorial support at the British Library. I'm looking forward to developing and deepening the story of my aunt's life, informed and illuminated by the archives, and to working with Hay and the Eccles Centre to make national and international connections."
Reported by:
Joe Buchanunn,
Media Relations
+44 (0)1895 268821
joe.buchanunn@brunel.ac.uk