2015 – Álex Ayala Ugarte (Spain)

Rigor Mortis: La normalidad es la muerte

This book of sixteen stories gives account of a journey across the Bolivian plateau in the footprints of death. From the region of Chaco to the high waters of the Titicaca, Ayala paints a portrait of death and how human beings accept it in the midst of Bolivian cultural diversity. The book was published in 2016 by Editorial El Cuervo.

2016 – Federico Bianchini (Argentina)

Antártida: 25 días encerrado en el hielo

Making it to Antarctica is hard, but it’s much harder to make it out of Antarctica. Bianchini writes of the uniqueness of the lives of the men and women who carry out research on one of the Argentine bases on that frigid, virgin continent. What was meant to be a weeklong stay turned into an almost month-long confinement. The book was published in 2017 by Editorial Tusquets.

The WINNER of the Michael Jacobs Travel Writing Grant 2018 is:

“Nicaragua: pueblos, lava y ceniza” (English, “Nicaragua: towns, lava, and ashes”), from the Ecuadorian journalist Sabrina Duque (one of 246 entries from 23 countries).

The greatest achievement of Duque’s project is  in finding an original way to portray the interaction of human beings with their natural environment. The author aims to analyze how Nicaraguan towns cohabit with volcanoes-, a proposal full of journalistic interest and that answers the basic requirement of travel writing:  namely offering a new way to see the world.

The description of a country through its day to day co-existence with a hostile nature is an idea that, according to the jury, will allow for fresh and highly rewarding travel writing.

Runner-up

Antonio Díaz Oliva, from Chile, for the project “Donde van a morir los escritores latinoamericanos" (English, “Where Latin American writers go to die”). 

The jury highlighted the originality of Díaz’s proposal, which aims to analyze the life of exponents of ‘The Latin American Boom’ through their private files. 

The  examination of documents on writers like García Márquez or José Donoso has not been previously done in this way. According to the jury, it will be journalistically valuable as it will allow the author to dig into the interior history of the ‘Boom’ and  help to translate the stories  that are generally covered by scholars and historians into a more popular and accessible language.

The jury  was also interested by the fact that many of the relevant files are distributed in different universities of the US and that the project aims to describe why and how they ended up there.

 Runner-up

Alejandra Sánchez Inzunza, from México, for the project “En malos pasos" (English, “Wrong path”).

This project stood out for giving the full picture of murders in Latin America, in an attempt to answer the question ‘Why are we the ones that kills the most all over the world?’, by exploring the seven most violent countries of the region.

The jury highlighted the virtue of exploration that the project carries, and its attempt for not being an anthology of the events and victims but rather to look fully a known phenomenon with new eyes.

This is a well-researched journalistic proposal and some stories published in international media outlets.