Campbell, Chisholm and Lenarduzzi shortlisted for Ackerley Prize

Nancy Campbell, Edward Chisholm and Thea Lenarduzzi have been shortlisted for this year’s Ackerley Prize for “a literary autobiography of outstanding merit” by an author of British nationality, published in the UK in the previous year.

Campbell is shortlisted for Thunderstone (Elliott & Thompson) which, written in diary form, describes what happens when the author breaks up with her partner and moves into a caravan parked between a canal and a railway on the fringes of Oxford.

Chisholm is shortlisted for A Waiter in Paris (Monoray), which describes the experiences of someone with no money, no experience and almost no French trying to hold on to a job in a smart Parisian restaurant and Lenarduzzi is shortlisted for Dandelions (Fitzcarraldo Editions), which delves into her family’s past in order to investigate what it means to be half-English and half-Italian, brought up speaking both languages equally, and belonging to a family that over the generations has shuttled between the two countries.

The winner of the prize will be announced at an event featuring the shortlisted authors in conversation with the chair of the judges, Peter Parker, at the London Review Bookshop in Bury Place in London at 7 p.m. on 28th September 2023.

The Ackerley Prize was established in memory of Joe Randolph Ackerley (1896–1967), the author and long-time literary editor of The Listener magazine. The prize’s partnership with English PEN, when it was known as the PEN Ackerley Prize, has come to an end, and from this year it has reverted to its original name of the Ackerley Prize.

Recent winners include Richard Beard, Yrsa Daley-Ward, Alison Light, Claire Wilcox and Frances Stonor Saunders. The prize is judged by the biographer and historian Peter Parker, the biographer and critic Claire Harman, and the writer and editor Michael Caines. The winner receives £3,000.

Parker said: “This year the judges called in 33 autobiographies and memoirs published in 2022 – just one fewer than last year. Over a period of five or so months we whittled down these books to 12 possible contenders for the prize. Then, during a long meeting in July, we reduced this dozen to a shortlist of three very different books that took us to the ragged fringes of Oxford, a chaotic restaurant in Paris, and a family home in north-east Italy. What they share is literary excellence and vivid evocations of people and places.”