Poet Mimi Khalvati, writer and researcher N.S. Nuseibeh and Children’s & Young Adult writer Nathanael Lessore have won the ninth Jhalak Prize awards.

Khalvati, winner of the King’s Gold Medal for Poetry and the founder of The Poetry School, won the inaugural Jhalak Poetry Prize for her ‘luminous testament to a lifetime of lyrical precision,’ Collected Poems.

Lessore, winner of the Branford Boase Award and shortlisted for the Jhalak Children’s & Young Adult Prize in 2024, won the 2025 Jhalak Children’s and Young Adult Prize for his hilarious yet urgent and vital novel, King of Nothing.

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Nuseibeh, a British-Palestinian writer and researcher, won the 2025 Jhalak Prose Prize for her ‘deft and immersive collection of essays,’ Namesake: Reflections on a Warrior Woman.

The announcement was made last night (Wednesday, 4th June) at a reception at the British Library. The awards were also live-streamed globally. Each writer was awarded £1,000 and a specially commissioned, unique trophy created by artists Khaver Idrees (for Jhalak Poetry Prize),) Lucy Farfort (for Jhalak Children’s & Young Adult Prize) and Ketna Patel (Jhalak Prose Prize).

Speaking about the winners, Prize Director, Sunny Singh said:

“The 2025 Jhalak judges have picked three very different books that are each towering literary achievements in their unique ways. These are books full of courage, insight and panache. Mimi Khalvati’s Collected Poems, N.S. Nuseibeh’s Namesake: Reflections on a Warrior Woman and Nathanael Lessore’s King of Nothing are very different books in terms of genre, style and the readers they address. Yet they compassionately and with utmost honesty confront terrible realities and explore painful and complex histories and lives even as they exemplify playful stylistic experimentation and mastery of form and language. Most of all, they find courage, empathy and delight in places and moments where these seem entirely impossible. In their nuanced explorations of the human experience, Khalvati, Lessore and Nuseibeh offer hope, beauty and joy.”

The Judges of the Jhalak Prize 2025

The judges for the inaugural Jhalak Poetry Prize were Jason Allen-Paisant, Malika Booker and Will Harris

Commenting on Khalvati’s Collected Poems, judge Jason Allen-Paisant said: “Collected Poems is a luminous testament to a lifetime of lyrical precision, emotional depth, and formal mastery.”

Malika Booker added: “Her voice, at once intimate, lyrical and expansive, continues to evolve while staying anchored in a deep commitment to poetic tradition…She is a guiding light. A master of form. A voice of quiet revolution. This award not only honours a single collection of meticulously crafted poems, but a lifetime of shaping, challenging, and enriching the canon.”

Will Harris said, “A lifetime's work…provide(s) a radiant frame: the mission of these poems is to restate the limits of a uniquely wandering mind and, in moving through various formal constraints, to surpass them.”

The judges for the Jhalak Children’s & Young Adult Prize were Yassmin Abdel-Magied, Hiba Noor Khan and Alom Shaha.

Commenting on Lessore and King of Nothing, judge and winner of the 2024 Jhalak Children’s & Young Adult Prize, Hiba Noor Khan said, “King of Nothing is immensely readable, heartwarming, and downright hilarious.”

Alom Shaha added, “This book is outstanding…laugh-out-loud funny and heartwarming. However, it is its treatment of contemporary concerns around toxic masculinity which make this book one that I hope will reach as many young teenagers as possible.”

Yassmin Abdel-Magied said, “King of Nothing is a riotous achievement. Funny, smart, with the feel of a contemporary classic, this is a book that is vital for today…This book may indeed change lives.’

The judges for the Jhalak Prose Prize were Sareeta Domingo, Taran N. Khan and Yepoka Yeebo.

Commenting on Nuseibeh’s Namesake, judge Sareeta Domingo said, “Namesake beautifully integrates the personal and the political, the timeless and the contemporary to weave a deft and immersive collection of essays…It's a vital piece of work for our current climate…” 

Taran N. Khan added, “Namesake is both expansive and intimate, moving through history, colonialism, and inherited fault-lines. N.S. Nuseibeh uses her personal story to hold a mirror to the cost of strategic erasure, and invites us to a reckoning that is incredibly relevant…” 

Judge and winner of 2024 Jhalak Prize, Yepoka Yeebo noted, “Namesake is deeply illuminating, beautifully researched and written with bracing honesty and vulnerability.”

What is the Jhalak Prize?

Established in 2016, the Jhalak Prize is unique in its celebration of exceptional work across genre and format, with fiction, non-fiction, short stories, graphic novels, poetry and self-published writers, eligible. The Jhalak Prize awards celebrate the creativity, imagination and literary excellence that people of colour bring to the UK publishing landscape. In 2024, the Jhalak Prize expanded its portfolio to honour poetry with a dedicated award, with the three prizes now named the Jhalak Prose Prize, the Jhalak Poetry Prize and the Jhalak Children’s & YA Prize.

The Jhalak Prize's ongoing partnership with National Book Tokens sees bookshops up and down the country championing the prize, each year reaching new reading communities.

The newly founded Jhalak Poetry Prize is supported by the independent poetry publisher Ink Sweat & Tears. 

Every year, artists of colour are commissioned to create unique works of art that serve as trophies for the winners of the Jhalak Prize awards. 2025 also sees the ongoing expansion of the annual Jhalak Art Residency.

The artists in residence for 2025 are:

Khaver Idrees - Jhalak Poetry Prize

Ketna Patel - Jhalak Prose Prize

Lucy Farfort - Jhalak Children's & Young Adult Prize

Find out more about the Residency and the 2025 artists here.

The Jhalak Prize 2025 Shortlist

To see the full shortlist of 18 titles for 2025, a great selection of literature from writers of colour that challenges, transforms and inspires - see our feature - The Jhalak Prize 2025 Shortlist.

For queries regarding eligibility, submissions, and other logistics, please contact the Jhalak Prize at info@jhalakprize.com or visit www.jhalakprize.com

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