Rebecca Perry wins 2026 Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize

In the UK, Rebecca Perry has won the 2026 Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize worth £5000 for May We Feed the King (Granta Books).

Chosen from a shortlist of 6, Perry’s debut novel follows a museum curator who recreates the rooms of an almost-forgotten medieval king, with the narrative shifting between the present day and the king’s reign in a reflection on history, storytelling and power.

“May We Feed the King stood out for its crisp, cool prose, and its playfully enigmatic approach to storytelling,” said Waterstones head of books Bea Carvalho. “With a poet’s eye for detail and a keen sense of humour, Perry grapples with the slippery nature of memory and the burden of power. Rebecca Perry is an author to be seriously excited about and we can’t wait to see what she does next.”

Perry said, “In writing this book, I wanted to press at the edges of both historical fiction as a genre, and how we narrate history, testing what gives and what holds. But I also wanted to explore the capacities of loneliness and imagination, and ultimately what happens when a person defies what is expected of them, refusing to step into the tyranny of power.”

A prize for debut fiction of all forms, the award is described as “a manifestation of the power of word-of-mouth recommendation by booksellers”.

The winner of last year’s award was Lucy Steeds for The Artist (John Murray), which also won the Waterstones Book of the Year Award.

Category: International awards International news