Chris Newens' Moveable Feasts wins the £2k Jane Grigson Trust Award for New Food and Drink Writers

Chris Newens’ Moveable Feasts: Paris in Twenty Meals — which will be published by Profile in 2025 — has been announced as the winner of the £2,000 Jane Grigson Trust Award for New Food and Drink Writers.

The prize, created in memory of the distinguished British food writer Jane Grigson, is awarded to a first-time writer of a book about food or drink which has been commissioned but not yet published.

"Moveable Feasts: Paris in Twenty Meals gives a whole new flavour profile to Paris, using food to present the city like never before," the book’s synopsis reads. "Structured around the author’s quest to learn the recipe for a different representative dish of each of Paris’ 20 arrondissements, the book exposes the epicurean interests of Paris’ diverse subcultures, from Congolese exiles to fifth-generation Algerians, from the modern heirs of Hemingway to sex club-going libertines."

Anna Ansari’s The Silk Roads Cookbook: Recipes from Baku to Beijing, which will be published by Dorling Kindersley in October 2025, was a runner-up this year, as was Nicola Lamb’s Sift: The Elements of Great Baking, due from Ebury Press in May 2024. They will receive £100 of Book Tokens, while all the shortlisted authors will get copies of The Best of Jane Grigson (Grub Street Publishing).

“In Moveable Feasts Chris Newens reveals the real culinary culture of Paris shaped by the diverse communities that occupy its 20 arrondissements," said Donald Sloan, the chair of the judges and of the Jane Grigson Trust. "You may think you know Paris, but in this beautifully written book Chris will take you on a journey to the parts you have never visited.”

Sami Tamimi, a guest judge, added: “I think Chris Newens is a brilliant writer and the whole narrative to his book is refreshing and totally original. As I was reading, I felt I wanted to meet Chris and spend time with him in Paris, not to go to the old Paris that everyone knows but to look at it from a fresh, modern perspective. But it is the writing that really grabs you about this book.”