The Wainwright Prize · award year
Wainwright Prize 2020
The 2020 Wainwright Prize went to Diary of a Young Naturalist by Dara McAnulty (Nature Writing) and Rebirding by Benedict Macdonald (Writing on Global Conservation). 13 books made the shortlist across 2 categories.
Winners
Nature Writing
- Diary of a Young Naturalistsource (opens in a new tab)
Writing on Global Conservation
- Rebirdingsource (opens in a new tab)
Shortlist
Nature Writing
- Dancing with Beessource (opens in a new tab)
- Dark, Salt, Clearsource (opens in a new tab)
- Native: Life in a Vanishing Landscapesource (opens in a new tab)
- On the Red Hillsource (opens in a new tab)
- The Frayed Atlantic Edgesource (opens in a new tab)
- Wanderlandsource (opens in a new tab)
Writing on Global Conservation
- Irreplaceablesource (opens in a new tab)
- Life Changingsource (opens in a new tab)
- Sitopiasource (opens in a new tab)
- What We Need to Do Nowsource (opens in a new tab)
- Working with Naturesource (opens in a new tab)
About the Wainwright Prize
Wainwright Prize, 2014-2025, every book category. Year is the prize year the body uses (shortlist in summer, winner announced in August/September). Categories as the body names them: Nature Writing (the only category 2014-2019, then called the Wainwright Golden Beer Book Prize for nature and UK travel writing); Writing on Global Conservation (2020-2021), Writing on Conservation (2022-2024) and Conservation Writing (2025) are the same strand under its successive names; Children's Writing on Nature and Conservation (2022-2024); from 2025 Illustrative Books, Children's Fiction, Children's Non-Fiction and Children's Picture Books. Levels: Winner, Shortlist (rest of the shortlist, including highly commended books), Longlist (longlisted, not shortlisted). The 2025 overall Book of the Year awards went to category winners and are not separate rows. Sources: wainwrightprize.com news posts and the 2025 shortlist page. Longlists are included only for 2021-2025, where the body's pages still list them; earlier longlists (2016-2020) were announced but those pages are gone, so those years have winner and shortlist only. 2014-2017 winner and shortlists come from Wikipedia's Wainwright Prize article (fallback), because the body's shortlist pages for those years return 404 and web.archive.org was unreachable from this machine. Authors only: illustrators credited with 'illustrated by' are left out; co-creators the body credits with 'and/&' are joined with ' and '. Expected counts are the books on the longlist page where one exists, otherwise the shortlist page.
Organization: The Wainwright Prize. Years are award years, which can differ from publication years. Official site (opens in a new tab)
Shares the most books with
- British Book Awards 11 shared books
- Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 9 shared books
- Goodreads Choice Awards 8 shared books
- Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence 6 shared books