Annabel Sowemimo, Robert Chapman and Hil Aked shortlisted for Bread and Roses Award 2024

Annabel Sowemimo, Robert Chapman and Hil Aked are among the authors to be shortlisted for the Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing. 

Hosted by the Alliance of Radical Booksellers with support from Lighthouse Books, the annual prize celebrates radical and accessible non-fiction. 

Selected from over 60 submissions, the six-strong shortlist interrogates topics from medical racism, decolonisation to capitalism and neurodiversity, genocide and women’s rights. 

Sowemimo made the list with Divided: Racism, Medicine and Why We Need to Decolonise Healthcare (Wellcome Collection), alongside Chapman’s Empire of Normality: Neurodiversity and Capitalism (Pluto) and Aked’s Friends of Israel: The Backlash Against Palestine Solidarity (Verso). Kaamil Ahmed is in contention for the prize with I Feel No Peace: Rohingya Fleeing Over Seas & Rivers (Hurst). Shattered Nation: Inequality and the Geography of a Failing State (Verso) by Danny Dorling joins the list along with Malu Halasa’s Woman Life Freedom: Voices and Art from the Women’s Protests in Iran (Saqi).

The winner will be awarded a £500 cash prize during a online ceremony in September 2024. 

The judges said: "The books shortlisted for the 2024 Bread and Roses Award are exemplary in their insight into some of the most widespread issues that are faced in the UK and in the rest of the world." 

The panel said the work by Dorling, Sowemimo, Aked and Chapman have "the power to shape many of our decisions and actions" while the shortlisted books by Halasa and Ahmed "remind us of our individual and collective positions and responsibilities in responding to crises and issues outside of our island".