‘A trailblazer in the truest sense’: poet Grace Nichols wins £10,000 Pioneer prize

The Guyana-born, British-based writer takes home the Royal Society of Literature prize honouring women writers over 60 who have broken barriers The poet Grace Nichols has been named the winner of the 2026 Royal Society of Literature Pioneer prize, a £10,000 award that recognises women writers over 60 who broke through at a time when the literary world was less open to them. Nichols, 76, who was born in Guyana and moved to the UK in 1977, made her name with I Is a Long-Memoried Woman, which took the Commonwealth poetry prize in 1983, and The Fat Black Woman’s Poems, a collection published the f

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