Phillips and collaborators awarded $40k Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant

Dom Phillips, an author who was killed while researching his book on the Amazon, is one of 10 recipients of the $40,000 (£31,762) Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant.

In June 2022 Phillips was shot dead with environmentalist Bruno Pereira while on his final research trip for How to Save the Amazon. Recognising the significance of the project, leading writers covering the Amazon have come together to finish Phillips’ book, to be published by Manilla Press in April 2025, including Jon Lee Anderson (the New Yorker), Eliane Brum (author and co-founder of Sumaúma), Andrew Fishman (the Intercept Brazil), Tom Phillips (Latin America correspondent for the Guardian) and Davi Kopenawa Yanomami (author of The Falling Sky), and is helmed by journalist Jonathan Watts. The collaborative project aims to honour "Phillips’ vision and his memory, offer up potential solutions that incorporate indigenous voices and experience, and insist that journalists will not be silenced".

This is the first time in the Whiting award’s history that a collaborative project has been acknowledged in this way. Nicholas Boggs, Eiren Caffall and Sarah Chihaya have also been awarded the grant, as have Alexander Clapp, Kendra Taira Field and Molly O’Toole. The other three winners this year are Carrie Schuettpelz, Sonia Shah and Reggie Ugwu.

The judges commented: “Dom Phillips’ reporting on ecological depredations in the Amazon, completed before his murder in the field, demonstrates impressive levels of access and a deep moral curiosity. It’s rare to encounter travel writing that truly shows the reader something they haven’t seen before; the sense of discovery—and, inevitably, peril—is palpable. It is galvanizing to see this cohort of investigative journalists come together to deliver on Phillips’ vision, and, crucially, to include first-hand indigenous perspectives and their potential solutions. This project speaks not only to the threatened territory of the Amazon but the vulnerable territory of freedom of speech.”

Editorial manager Justine Taylor said: "We were thrilled to acquire Dom’s book and received dispatches from the Amazon as and when he could write them, and we could see the important book this was shaping up to be —  immersing us in this incredible landscape, highlighting to us the work done by the peoples who live there, offering us new ways in which we can help restore this vital ecosystem.

"It was such a shock to learn of Dom’s and Bruno’s deaths — and an immeasurable loss for their families — but we are so glad and proud that Dom’s work will be continued by Jonathan Watts and his team of contributors."