Margo Jefferson and Victoria Adukwei Bulley won in their categories at the Rathbones Folio Prize 2023 in London, UK on March 27, 2023.
The Rathbones Folio Prize is a literary award currently sponsored by Rathbones Investment Management that first ran in 2014–2015. Previous winners have been George Saunders, Akhil Sharma, Hisham Matar, Richard Lloyd Parry, Raymond Antrobus, and Valeria Luiselli.
The jury for 2023 comprises author, playwright, academic and journalist Ali Smith (chair), poet, playwright, and novelist Jackie Kay and journalist, filmmaker and novelist Guy Gunaratne. The shortlists in the fiction, poetry, and nonfiction categories were announced on January 31 before the winners were revealed at the British Museum on Monday.
The winners of the awards are;
Nonfiction
- Margo Jefferson, Constructing a Nervous System (Granta)
The judges described the book as: “An astounding and rhapsodic book, playful and serious, throwing form brightly open as it goes, Constructing a Nervous System is partly a memoir, partly an adept and energising cultural study, partly a lit-up kind of lit crit, and wholly a deeply moving delight, the result of which is a book unlike any other; a thrilling, generous, spirited and surprising read that remakes culture, redresses history, renews and repurposes everything it touches, and passes on these gifts of reinvention and renewal to everyone who’ll read it.”
Jefferson said in her remarks, “First of all to the other nominees, I am very proud to be in your company.”
Poetry
- Victoria Adukwei Bulley, Quiet (Faber)
The judges described Quiet as “a quiet revolution of a book – subtle, supple and serious, these poems look for a language, a language that can be shared, that embraces the inner and the outer worlds. Tender and true, complex and profound, Quiet is a beautiful balancing act of a book – a debut that brings Adukwei Bulley fully-formed, starting something!”
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