Wellcome Trust Book Prize
Encyclopedia
Wellcome Trust Book Prize is an annual British literary award
sponsored by Wellcome Trust
. In keeping with the vision and goals of Wellcome Trust, the Book Prize honors "the best of medicine in literature", including fiction and non-fiction. The winner receives £25,000.
The current prize for medicine in literature was inaugurated in 2009, but there was an older award with the same name. In 1998 Wellcome Trust began offering a prize that would enable a practicing life scientist to take time off and write a science book for the general reader. Applicants would submit a book outline and sample chapter, winners would then be obligated to write and publish the book. It appears the only winner was Michael J. Morgan
for The Space Between Our Ears: How the Brain Represents Visual Space (2001), before the prize (for science writing) was discontinued.
2011 Alice LaPlante, Turn of Mind
2010 Rebecca Skloot
, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
2009 Andrea Gillies, Keeper: Living with Nancy - A Journey into Alzheimer's
Literary award
A literary award is an award presented to an author who has written a particularly lauded piece or body of work. There are awards for forms of writing ranging from poetry to novels. Many awards are also dedicated to a certain genre of fiction or non-fiction writing . There are also awards...
sponsored by Wellcome Trust
Wellcome Trust
The Wellcome Trust was established in 1936 as an independent charity funding research to improve human and animal health. With an endowment of around £13.9 billion, it is the United Kingdom's largest non-governmental source of funds for biomedical research...
. In keeping with the vision and goals of Wellcome Trust, the Book Prize honors "the best of medicine in literature", including fiction and non-fiction. The winner receives £25,000.
The current prize for medicine in literature was inaugurated in 2009, but there was an older award with the same name. In 1998 Wellcome Trust began offering a prize that would enable a practicing life scientist to take time off and write a science book for the general reader. Applicants would submit a book outline and sample chapter, winners would then be obligated to write and publish the book. It appears the only winner was Michael J. Morgan
Michael J. Morgan
Michael John Morgan FRS is a Welsh professor at City University, London. His area of research is the experimental psychology of vision, from neuroanatomy to perception and psychophysics. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2005...
for The Space Between Our Ears: How the Brain Represents Visual Space (2001), before the prize (for science writing) was discontinued.
Winners and Honorees
Blue Ribbon = winner2011 Alice LaPlante, Turn of Mind
- Philip RothPhilip RothPhilip Milton Roth is an American novelist. He gained fame with the 1959 novella Goodbye, Columbus, an irreverent and humorous portrait of Jewish-American life that earned him a National Book Award...
, Nemesis - Louisa Young, My Dear I Wanted to Tell You
- Ann PatchettAnn PatchettAnn Patchett is an American author. She received the Orange Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award in 2002 for her novel Bel Canto. Patchett's other novels include Run, The Patron Saint of Liars, Taft, and The Magician's Assistant, which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize...
, State of Wonder - Siddhartha MukherjeeSiddhartha MukherjeeSiddhartha Mukherjee is an Indian-born American physician, scientist and writer. He authored the 2010 book, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, which won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction...
, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer - Sarah MangusoSarah MangusoSarah Manguso is an American writer and poet born in Massachusetts in 1974. In 2007, she was awarded the Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize Fellowship in literature by the American Academy of Arts and Letters...
, The Two Kinds of Decay
2010 Rebecca Skloot
Rebecca Skloot
Rebecca L. Skloot is a freelance science writer who specializes in science and medicine. Her first book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks , was one of the best-selling new books of the year, staying on the New York Times Bestseller List for over 32 weeks and optioned to be made into a movie by...
, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a non-fiction book by American author Rebecca Skloot. It is about Henrietta Lacks and the immortal cell line, known as HeLa, that came from her cervical cancer cells in 1951. The book is notable for its accessible science writing and dealing with ethical...
- Gareth Williams, Angel of Death: The Story of Smallpox
- Emma Henderson, Grace Williams Says it Loud
- John NicholJohn Nichol (RAF officer)Flight Lieutenant Adrian John Nichol is a retired Royal Air Force navigator who was shot down and captured during the first Gulf War.-Early life:...
, Medic: Saving Lives - from Dunkirk to Afghanistan - Lionel ShriverLionel Shriver-Early life and education:Lionel Shriver was born Margaret Ann Shriver on May 18, 1957 in Gastonia, North Carolina, to a deeply religious family . At age 15, she changed her name from Margaret Ann to Lionel because she did not like the name she had been given, and as a tomboy felt that a...
, So Much For That - Tim ParksTim ParksTim Parks is a British novelist, translator and author.-Life:Tim Parks was born in Manchester in 1954, the son of a clergyman. He grew up in Finchley , London and was educated at Cambridge University and Harvard. He has lived near Verona in Italy since 1981...
, Teach Us to Sit Still: A Sceptic's Search for Health and Healing
2009 Andrea Gillies, Keeper: Living with Nancy - A Journey into Alzheimer's
- Abraham VergheseAbraham VergheseAbraham Verghese is Professor for the Theory and Practice of Medicine at Stanford University Medical School and Senior Associate Chair of the Department of Internal Medicine. He was born in Ethiopia to parents from Kerala, India who worked as teachers. He is a Syro-Malabar Christian...
, Cutting for StoneCutting for StoneCutting for Stone is a novel written by Ethiopian born medical doctor and author Abraham Verghese. It is a saga of twin brothers, orphaned by their mother's death at their births and forsaken by their father.-Critical reception:... - Brian Dillon, The Hypochondriacs: Nine Tormented Lives
- Havi Carel, Illness (Art of Living)
- Allegra GoodmanAllegra GoodmanAllegra Goodman is an American author based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her most recent novel, The Cookbook Collector, was published in 2010. Goodman wrote and illustrated her first novel at the age of seven. -Early years and family:...
, Intuition - Jonny SteinbergJonny SteinbergJonny Steinberg is a South African writer and scholar. In the mid-1990s he was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship and studied at Oxford University's Balliol college, from which he graduated with a doctorate in political theory. He returned to South Africa in 1998 and worked for the national daily...
, Sizwe's Test: A Young Man's Journey Through Africa's AIDS Epidemic, aka Three-Letter Plague
External links
- Wellcome Trust Book Prize, official website.