Diana McCaulay wins 2026 RSL Ondaatje Prize for A House for Miss Pauline
Jamaican writer Diana McCaulay has won the 2026 RSL Ondaatje Prize for A House for Miss Pauline, published by Dialogue Books.
The £10,000 prize, presented annually by the Royal Society of Literature, celebrates a work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry that best evokes the spirit of a place. McCaulay was announced as the winner at an event held on 1st June at Two Temple Place in London.
McCaulay said: "To evoke the spirit of a place has been the animating intention of all my novels and stories."
She added: "My character Miss Pauline, who is 99 years old, has a saying: ‘Rest me down easy, because I am a cracked plate.’ Tonight I feel a bit like a cracked plate. This is an amazing honour. I have known of this prize since its inception. I cannot believe I am standing here in front of you."
McCaulay is a writer and environmental activist based in Kingston, Jamaica. She has published six novels and has twice won the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, in 2012 and 2022. She is also the founder of the Jamaica Environment Trust.
A House for Miss Pauline was shortlisted alongside Greyhound (Fitzcarraldo Editions) by Joanna Pocock, Helm (Faber) by Sarah Hall, Saraswati (Serpent’s Tail) by Gurnaik Johal, The Benefactors (Sceptre) by Wendy Erskine and The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A People’s History of Afghanistan (Hutchinson Heinemann) by Lyse Doucet.
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Ekow Eshun, chair of the judging panel, said: "All of these works are profound, poetic and moving. This is a prize that honours works that evoke the spirit of place, and we took very seriously the notion of spirit. The works we felt were most powerful and significant were works that evoked being and sensibility, works that spoke of the psyche as much as the physical."
Judge Emma Dabiri said: "Humorous, horrific, poignant and profound, the past is far from finished in A House for Miss Pauline, Diana McCaulay’s richly evocative novel about inheritances in multitude of forms, and the afterlife of slavery in Jamaica."
Third judge Claire Armitstead added: "An evocative and powerful novel of belonging, with a fabulously eccentric protagonist, which complicates everything we assume about colonial history in all the right ways."
Opening the ceremony, RSL president Elif Shafak said: "The RSL Ondaatje Prize is one of our most treasured literary celebrations. It is given to a work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry. It is unique in the way in which it celebrates the spirit of a place."
