Ashoka University

The Centre for the Creative and the Critical, Ashoka University, India, and Balliol College, Oxford University, United Kingdom, are pleased to announce an international book award in creative nonfiction. The award, in the amount of £10,000 GBP, will be given annually to the best book of creative nonfiction published anywhere in English in the preceding year. The first award will be given in 2026 for a book published in 2025.

The award will be decided by a panel of 3 judges chosen by an international advisory board convened by Ashoka University and Balliol College, Oxford. Judges will be appointed to serve for one year at a time and never for two years in succession. In 2026, the judges are:

• Merve Emre, the Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing and Criticism at Wesleyan University, CT, and Director of the Shapiro Center for Creative Writing and Criticism.
• Seamus Perry, Professor of English Literature in the English Faculty at the University of Oxford and Master of Balliol College, Oxford.
• Vijay Seshadri, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and member of the Faculty of English and Creative Writing at Sarah Lawrence College, NY.

The Advisory Board consists of:

• Amit Chaudhuri (Centre for the Creative and the Critical, Ashoka University; writer)
• Edwin Frank (NYRB Classics, New York, NY)
• Arvind Krishna Mehrotra (Dehradun, India; poet)
• Linn Cary Mehta (spouse and literary executor of Ved Mehta)
• Seamus Perry (for Balliol — stepping aside for the year he is a judge)

Neither Balliol College nor Ashoka University will accept applications or unsolicited nominations. The award will honour works of creative nonfiction that explore new forms of writing and expand the reach of innovative work in creative nonfiction.

As long as they are published in English, the books under consideration can come from any country and may include books translated into English. If a translated book is chosen, the translator will also receive a prize of £2,000 GBP. The short list will be announced in September, and the prize will be given in November. The award ceremony will take place at Balliol and Ashoka in alternate years.

Creative Non-fiction, in this context, encompasses a book-length work of literary non-fiction. This may include books of essays around a unified theme written for a general audience. It will not include strictly academic work. The award is meant to recognise the more imaginative forms of nonfiction writing and to acknowledge the stretching of genre-related boundaries in creative nonfiction, which has emerged as a serious alternative to both fiction and academic writing in the 21st century.

Ved Mehta (1934-2021) wrote and was, indeed, a pioneer in many forms of creative non-fiction ranging from memoir and autobiography to portraits of historians, philosophers, and theologians to criticism, travel writing, and political commentary on India. While these categories are not restrictive, they may all be considered.

The Centre for the Creative and the Critical at Ashoka University makes (as its name suggests) creative nonfiction one of its primary concerns, and its team comprises eminent practitioners in that form of writing. Its Director is the novelist, essayist, critic, and poet Amit Chaudhuri, who has helped give this prize its conceptual definition.

A supplementary grant will support an annual short-term visiting fellowship, the Ved Mehta Fellowship in Creative Nonfiction, at the Centre for the Creative and the Critical.

For further information, please consult www.vedmehtaprize.org

All enquiries relating to the Ved Mehta Prize should be addressed to: info@vedmehtaprize.org