Katie Hale Wins Speculative Literature Foundation’s 2021 Gulliver Travel Grant

Poet Katie Hale photographed near her home at Keld, near Shap. Photo by Phil Rigby.

The Speculative Literature Foundation has chosen Katie Hale as the winner of the 2021 Gulliver Travel Grant.

Since 2004, the Gulliver Travel Grant has sought to assist writers of speculative literature (in fiction, poetry, drama, or creative nonfiction) in their research.  The grant awards one writer $1000 annually, to be used to cover airfare, lodging, and/or other travel expenses.

Hale’s piece, “The Guilting,”was inspired by “a trip to Antarctica at the beginning of 2020, and learning about the continent’s geopolitical situation alongside the impact of climate change.” Judges found her work intriguing and poetic.

Based in the UK, Katie Hale is an internationally recognized poet and novelist. In 2017, she was selected for Penguin Random House’s inaugural WriteNow mentoring scheme – and since then, her debut novel, My Name is Monster (Canongate, 2019), has been translated into multiple languages, and was shortlisted for the Kitschies Golden Tentacle Award. She is also the author of two poetry collections: Breaking the Surface, and Assembly Instructions, which won the Munster Chapbook Prize in 2019. She is a 2019 MacDowell Fellow, and has undertaken Writer in Residence positions internationally, including Gladstone’s Library in Wales, Hawthornden Castle in Scotland, and Passa Porta in Belgium.

In 2021, she won the Palette Poetry Prize, the Prole Laureate Prize, and a Northern Writers’ Award. Her work has been shortlisted for the Desperate Literature, Mslexia and Manchester Prizes, and has appeared in journals such as Poetry Review, Under the Radar, Joyland and The North. In 2021, she was longlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award. She has also written for theatre and immersive digital performance, and has featured on national radio and television, having written commissions for organizations including the BBC, the National Trust, and the Barbican Centre. She regularly runs writing workshops online and in person, and is currently working on her second novel.

The Gulliver Travel Grant is intended to assist writers of speculative fiction in research, and can be used to cover airfare, lodging, and other travel expenses. Previous winners of the Gulliver Travel Grant include Hugo Award-winning author N.K. Jemisin, Ibi Zoboi, and Daniel José Older; last year’s winner was María Isabel Álvarez.

For more information about the grant, click here.

Founded in January 2004 to promote literary quality in speculative fiction, the all-volunteer Speculative Literature Foundation is led by Mary Anne Mohanraj and 30 other committed volunteers. The Foundation maintains a comprehensive website offering information for readers, writers, editors and publishers of speculative fiction, develops book lists and outreach materials for schools and libraries, and raises funds for redistribution to other organizations in the field, as well as five awards made annually to writers, including the Gulliver Travel Grant. For more information, visit  the Speculative Literature Foundation website. The SLF is a 501(c)3 non-profit, entirely supported by community donations.

The Speculative Literature Foundation is partially funded by a grant from the Oak Park Area Arts Council, Village of Oak Park, Illinois Arts Council, National Endowment for the Arts and Oak Park River Forest Community Foundation.

[Based on a press release.]