Inaugural Ved Mehta Prize in Creative Nonfiction Announces Six-Book Shortlist

On Wednesday, 4th November, 2026, The Centre for the Creative and the Critical (CCC) announced the shortlist for the inaugural Ved Mehta Prize in Creative Nonfiction. The award is meant to recognise outstanding works in the field published in English during the past year. 

The Prize hopes to expand and highlight the diversity and quality of Creative Nonfiction internationally and bring attention to the excellence of prose, ambition, and experimental traits found in many different works around the world. It is accompanied by a prize of £10,000 GBP, with an additional £2,000 GBP for the translator of the novel. 

The award was introduced a few months ago in a collaboration between the CCC, The Balliol College of Oxford University, and the family of Ved Mehta, a renowned India born-American writer (whom the prize is named after), as per previous coverage by The Edict. It will be awarded by a panel of 3 distinguished Professors: 

Professor Merve Emre, the Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing and Criticism at Wesleyan University, Connecticut, and Director of the Shapiro Centre for Creative Writing and Criticism.

 Professor Seamus Perry, Professor of English Literature in the English Faculty at the University of Oxford and Master of Balliol College, Oxford.

Professor Vijay Seshadri, a Pulitzer Prize–winning author and member of the Faculty of English and Creative Writing at Sarah Lawrence College, New York. 

The books selected for the prize include The Mind Electric by Pria Anand, Charlottesville: An American Story by Deborah Baker, Bibliophobia by Sarah Chihaya, Homework by Geoff Dyer, Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li and Greyhound by Joanna Pocock.

The award ceremony will be held at both Ashoka University and The Balliol College, with the winner set to be invited to The Balliol College on 27th November, 2026. 

[Edited by Ananya Mahnot and Avika Mantri.]