The winner of The Michael Jacobs Travel Writing Award 2026

British journalist and writer Alice Albinia was selected as the winner of the 2026 Michael Jacobs Travel Writing Award, organized by the Gabo Foundation, the Hay Festival, and The Michael Jacobs Foundation for Travel Writing. Albinia becomes the second woman to receive this honour.

Albinia’s project is a book that connects European wealth accumulation during the Victorian era with the exploitation of natural and human resources in Bolivia, Chile and Peru, drawing on the history of the nineteenth-century guano and saltpeter trade. Her approach reflects on how the colonial wound might be addressed by telling the story from the sites of exploitation omitted from traditional narratives of European wealth, bringing a distinct perspective to the body of work supported by the grant.

According to the jury proceedings, the author’s ability to weave her own family history into economic and colonial history, as well as contemporary environmental crises, was particularly highlighted for its coherence and clarity.

The jury’s decision to select Albinia’s project was motivated by “its literary strength and the presence of a distinctive, seasoned voice”.

To date, the author’s research has combined academic training, archival work, and fieldwork. Her interest in the subject grew from the discovery of her maternal family’s Peruvian history in 2017. She later researched the legacy of guano mining as an Eccles Centre Fellow (2022), working at the British Library and collaborating with the Chilean collective Hilanderas on the project La Voz de la Tierra.