Celebrating Women’s Travel Writing

We are pleased to launch the world’s most valuable prizes for travel writing by women.

Set up in memory of Ilse Schwepcke, a proud publisher of travel writing and feminist, the Ilse Schwepcke Prize will award £5,000 to the best English-language travel book written by a woman each year.

Honouring Ilse Schwepcke’s roots in both Germany and the UK, a sister prize will present €6,000 to the woman writer of the best travel book in German.

‘I wish,’ Ilse said to a travel writer, ‘I wish I could go with you.’

But they both knew it was impossible. At the time of their meeting, she was already in her late eighties, a director at Haus Publishing, the company set up by her daughter Barbara, using Ilse’s maiden name. Not long after the company started operating, Ilse became the curator of a unique list of travel books inspired by many a journey she had taken – or wished she had.

Ilse’s commissions resolutely reflected a love of travel itself and a refusal to pander to the mainstream. Beautifully written, the books on Ilse’s list invited us all to voyage far beyond the sunset, even if we never leave our armchairs. The Ilse Schwepcke Prize therefore celebrates travellers she would have wished to have accompanied, writers she would have commissioned, and authors she would have loved to have published.

¹For the purposes of the Ilse Schwepcke Prize, a woman is a cis woman, a transgender woman or anyone who is legally defined as a woman or of the female sex.