Jeffrey Boakye and Kojo Koram shortlisted for the Bread & Roses Award for left-wing non-fiction

Jeffrey Boakye, Kojo Koram and Ione Gamble are among the authors shortlisted for the £500 Bread & Roses Award (B&R) for radical left-wing political non-fiction, presented by the Alliance of Radical Booksellers.

In total 43 books were submitted to this year’s award, including from large publishers Penguin and Hachette, as well as smaller independents like Pluto, Saqi Books and Autonomedia. These where whittled down to a shortlist of five titles, and the winner will be announced in a virtual ceremony at the end of February.

Examining disability and queer rights, legacies of empire, race, education and the criminal justice system, the shortlisted books "toe the line between intimate personal reflections and confident political analysis".

Boakye is on the list for I Heard What You Said (Picador), and Koram is shortlisted for Uncommon Wealth (John Murray Press). This Arab is Queer, an anthology edited by Elias Jahshan (Saqi Books), is also featured on the shortlist, alongside Gamble’s Poor Little Sick Girls (Dialogue Books) and Abolition Revolution by Aviah Sarah Day and Shanice Octavia McBean (Pluto Press). 

The judges also congratulated the writers whose books made it to the longlist, for providing "in-depth and comprehensive research to inspire future environmental policies and a thorough examination of the racial codes that still segregate our society". The 2023 longlist featured Regenesis by George Monbiot (Penguin Books) and The Racial Code by Nicola Rollock (Penguin Books) and The Value of a Whale by Adrienne Buller (Manchester University Press).

The award was established by Housmans bookshop in 2012, and has since been run in collaboration with Five Leaves Bookshop and then Lighthouse, Edinburgh’s Radical Bookshop.

Chair of the judges Mairi Oliver said: “It’s deeply gratifying to see in this year’s B&R shortlist five books that tackle some of the most pressing concerns of the day with original insight and creativity and a genuine desire to connect readers with new and radical possibilities and understanding.

"We have Gamble on disability and feminism, McBean and Day on transformative justice, Boakye on education, Koram on the economic legacies of empire, and 18 queer Arab voices making the personal political – each book imbued with a real sense of history, clear eyed and compelling as they illustrate the systems of oppression that have built this present moment and shaped their concerns as writers."

The 2024 award is now open submissions of non-fiction books published in 2023, which are informed by socialist, anarchist, environmental, feminist and anti-racist concerns, and which "inspire, support or report on political and/or personal change".

The deadline for submitting books is 29th February 2024, and more information about criteria and where to send print books is available on the submissions page.

Past winners of the award include Ellen Clifford, Johny Pitts, Reni Eddo-Lodge and, in its first year, David Graeber.