The Wainwright Prizes announced its shortlist on Tuesday. Indian writer and naturalist Yuvan Aves has made the shortlist for the 2025 Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing for his book Intertidal: A Coast and Marsh Diary. He is the first Indian to be nominated for the award. The shortlist comprises seven titles.
The prize showcases writing that reflects its namesake Alfred Wainwright’s values of celebrating nature and our environment, nurturing respect for our planet, and informing readers of the threats that the earth currently faces. The winner will be announced at an awards ceremony on September 10 at FarmED in Oxford, UK.
The other books on the shortlist are:
The Possibility of Tenderness by Jason Allen-Paisant (Hutchinson Heinemann, Cornerstone)
Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton (Canongate Books)
Our Oaken Bones by Merlin Hanbury-Tenison (Witness Books, Ebury Publishing)
Of Thorn and Briar by Paul Lamb (Simon and Schuster UK)
The Accidental Garden by Richard Mabey (Profile Books)
Ingrained by Callum Robinson (Doubleday, Transworld)
Callum Robinson’s Ingrained is a tribute to trees, timber, and craftsmanship, while Yuvan Aves’ Intertidal reveals an unseen world, asking us to reimagine values to live by. Paul Lamb’s Of Thorn and Briar celebrates the benefits of hedgerows and a way of living that has all but disappeared, and Merlin Hanbury-Tenison’s Our Oaken Bones connects personal history with the natural environment. Chloe Dalton’s Raising Hare chronicles an extraordinary relationship between human and animal, while Richard Mabey’s The Accidental Garden explores gardens as places of cultural and ecological fusion. Finally, Jason Allen-Paisant’s The Possibility of Tenderness explores personal and people’s history through plants and migration.
