Foyles is delighted to host the TLS Ackerley Prize, the esteemed literary prize dedicated to memoir and autobiography, for an evening of conversation culminating in the announcement of this year’s winner.
The three shortlisted writers will be in conversation with the chair of the judges Peter Parker about their books, and their unique approaches to writing autobiography. Last year’s winner, Catherine Taylor, critic and author of The Stirrings, will also reflect on her experience of the Prize. The evening will culminate in the announcement of the winner of this year’s TLS Ackerley Prize.
The Ackerley Prize was established 42 years ago in memory of Joe Randolph Ackerley (1896–1967), the author and long-time literary editor of The Listener magazine, and is now awarded in partnership with the Times Literary Supplement.
The prize is given annually to a literary autobiography of outstanding merit, written by an author of British nationality, and published in the UK in the previous year.
The shortlisted authors are:
Catherine Coldstream, author of Cloistered, an extraordinary and frank account of a life largely hidden from the outside world, one in which a contemplative ideal is undermined by petty squabbles, jealousy and even violence.
Clair Wills, for Missing Persons, which describes the author’s attempts to uncover and understand the family secrets kept by her maternal grandmother in County Cork. A story of startling freshness, particularly in her detailed account of her family’s life in rural Ireland from the nineteenth century to her own childhood in the 1960s.
Jeff Young, author of Wild Twin, describes how in the 1970s, inspired by images gleaned from his reading, the young author leaves a very ordinary life with a dead-end job in Liverpool in search of a bohemian existence as a writer in Europe. A highly original book about the pursuit of romantic ideals and the workings of memory.
The event will be chaired by:
Peter Parker is the author of biographies of J. R. Ackerley and Christopher Isherwood, among other acclaimed titles. His two-volume anthology of mid-century queer life, Some Men In London, was published by Penguin Classics in 2024. He has written about people, books, art, architecture and gardening for a wide variety of newspapers and magazines, and lives in London's East End.
There will be a short intermission between the shortlist panel discussion and the winner announcement. The shortlisted books will be on sale at the event ad there will be a book signing. Your ticket includes a complimentary glass of wine.
