The winners of the Queen Mary Small Press Fiction Prize 2026

We’re thrilled to announce the two joint winners for this year’s Queen Mary Small Press Fiction Prize: Ghost Driver by Nell Osborne from Moist Books and Figures Crossing the Field Towards the Group by Rebecca Gransden from Tangerine Press.

The winners were announced on March 25th at Queen Mary University, London, following a panel with the five shortlistees, the prize judges and the director of the Republic of Consciousness Foundation, Neil Griffiths.

The joint winners will share the glory as well as a five-day writer’s residency for their authors thanks to our partners at the Hawkwood Centre for Future Thinking. We’d like to thank all our other partners and every entrant that helped make this prize happen and supported small press fiction.

Shortlist for The Queen Mary Small Press Fiction Prize 2026

We’re happy and proud to finally share the five books and presses on this year’s shortlist—the first year of the prize with our new name and partner, Queen Mary University, London.

The shortlisted titles and presses can be found here, while the longlistees can be found here.

The judges for The Queen Mary Small Press Fiction Prize 2026

Susanna Crossman

Susanna Crossman is an essayist and award-winning fiction writer. Her new novel, The Orange Notebooks, is out in 2025 (Bluemoose Books, UK and Assembly Press, NA). Her acclaimed memoir, Home is Where We Start: Growing Up In The Fallout of The Utopian Dream, was published by Fig Tree, Penguin, in 2024 and will be published by Heliotrope Books (US) in 2026. She has recent work in Aeon, The Guardian, Paris Review, Vogue, Neue Rundschau and more. A published novelist in France and member of the Dangerous Women project, she regularly collaborates with artists on hybrid projects. 

STU HENNIGAN

Stu Hennigan is a writer, poet and musician from the north of England. His book Ghost Signs was shortlisted for two national literary prizes including Best Political Book By A Non-Parliamentarian at the Parliamentary Book Awards in 2023. His debut novel, Keshed, is being published in February 2026, followed in 2027 by Disappear Here: Bret Easton Ellis' America, both with Ortac Press. His short fiction, essays, poems and criticism have been published widely in print and online. He also plays guitar in the rock band Kamien.

MARINA BENJAMIN

Marina Benjamin is the author of a trilogy of memoirs exploring midlife. The Middlepause (2016) is an open and open-hearted personal account of the years leading up to turning 50; Insomnia (2018), an unsettling account of a deeply troubling state of lack and longing; and A Little Give (2023) situated in the trenches of domestic life: in housework and caring. She also wrote Last Days In Babylon (2007), a family memoir about the Jews of Iraq; Rocket Dreams (2004), which looked at where the dreams that once animated the space age washed up once they fell to Earth; and a book about modern-day end-time cults, Living at the end of the World (1998). She’s also a regular tutor of life writing and creative non-fiction at Arvon, tutored a memoir course on the Granta Writers Workshop, and a course on Writing the Personal Essay for the Faber Academy.