KINGSTON, Jamaica – Jamaican writer Diana McCaulay has won the 2026 RSL Ondaatje Prize for her novel A House for Miss Pauline, securing the prestigious £10,000 award at a ceremony in London earlier this week
Presented annually by the Royal Society of Literature since 2004, the prize recognizes a distinguished work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry that best evokes the spirit of a place.
McCaulay’s novel, published in the United Kingdom by Dialogue Books and in the United States by Algonquin Books in February 2025, was praised by judges for its exploration of history, identity and belonging through a distinctly Jamaican lens.
RSL judge Claire Armitstead described the work as “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.”
McCaulay was the only Caribbean writer among the six shortlisted authors competing for this year’s prize.
The award marks another major achievement for McCaulay, one of Jamaica’s most celebrated literary figures.
A recipient of the Gold Musgrave Medal, Jamaica’s highest honor for lifetime achievement in the arts and sciences, she is also a two-time winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize for the Caribbean region, having claimed the title in 2012 and 2022.
Her literary accolades also include being shortlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and winning the Watson, Little 50 Prize.
