Bread and Roses Award 2022 The Shortlist & The Longlist

The Bread and Roses Award is a book prize with a difference: presented by the Alliance of Radical Booksellers, and without the backing of corporate sponsors, the award seeks to recognise and celebrate excellence in the field of radical political non-fiction (Full judging criteria here). 2022 marks 100 years since the Bread and Roses strike of 1912 and 10 years since the Award was established by Housmans in 2012. It has since been run in collaboration with Five Leaves Bookshop and then us at Lighthouse.

From almost 70 submissions, our panel of judges are thrilled to present a shortlist of 5 titles and a longlist of 10. The winner will be announced on Tuesday 29th November in a virtual ceremony (join us!) and be awarded the £500 prize. SHORTLIST:

• Abolishing the Police, Ed Koshka Duff from Dog Section Press
• Ciao Ousmane: The Hidden Exploitation of Italy's Migrant Workers, Hsiao-Hung Pai from from Hurst
• The Chagos Betrayal : How Britain Robbed an Island and Made Its People Disappear, Florian Grosset from Myriad Editions
• Empire’s Endgame, Gargi Bhattacharyya et al from Pluto Press
• Paint your town red, Matthew Brown and Rhian E Jones from Repeater Books

LONGLIST:

• Cut from the Same Cloth? : Muslim Women on Life in Britain, Ed Sabina Akhtar from Unbound
• Make Bosses Pay, Eve Livingston from Pluto Press
• Planet on Fire, Matthew Lawrence & Laurie Laybourn-Langton from Verso
• The transgender issue, Shon Faye from Penguin
• The 32 : An Anthology of Irish Working-Class Voices, Ed Paul McVeigh from Unbound

The shortlist is reflective of the dynamic, prescient publishing of many smaller independent and radical presses, hitting on issues that have loomed ever larger since submissions closed in January 2022: from migrant rights and policing, to economic inequality and a reckoning with Britain’s Imperial legacies. Whilst the longlist also offers vital insight into the climate crisis, union organizing and marginalized voices. The shortlist includes a graphic history and two anthologies, as well as a previous winner of the prize- Hsiao-Hung Pai. Past winners include Ellen Clifford, Johny Pitts, Reni Eddo-Lodge and, in its very first year, David Graeber.