American poet Sasha Debevec-McKenney wins Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize with Joy Is My Middle Name
Swansea, 19:30 on Thursday 14 May 2026
Today, American poet Sasha Debevec-McKenney has been announced as the winner of the world’s largest and most prestigious literary prize for young writers – the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize – for her debut collection Joy Is My Middle Name.
Chosen in a unanimous decision by this year’s judging panel, Joy Is My Middle Name documents the journey of crawling through your twenties and emerging into your thirties, navigating sex, race, womanhood, addiction, sobriety, consumerism and pop culture. The judging panel praised Sasha for her energising, exuberant and robust collection, condensing huge ideas into something that is truly a joy to read.
Irenosen Okojie, Chair of Judges, said on behalf of the panel: “Incredible. An exuberant, blistering collection full of life, humour and ideas. Debevec-McKenney is a ferociously gifted talent. The book is remarkable in the way it galvanises the reader with a sense of intimacy that is authentic and a voice that feels like an antidote to our tricky times.”
Sasha Debevec-McKenney said: “I really love writing poems, it makes life worth living. Every emotion I’ve ever had, there’s a poem for it. To get this prize feels completely unbelievable. I’m really honoured.”
Sasha Debevec-McKenney was awarded the £20,000 prize – which celebrates exceptional literary talent aged 39 or under – at a ceremony held in Swansea tonight, marking International Dylan Thomas Day. Joy Is My Middle Name, which was released in paperback on 3 July 2025, is published by Fitzcarraldo Editions.
The prize is named after the Swansea-born writer Dylan Thomas and celebrates his 39 years of creativity and productivity. The prize invokes Thomas’ memory to support the writers of today, nurture the talents of tomorrow, and celebrate international literary excellence in all its forms including poetry, novels, short stories and drama.
The other titles shortlisted for the 2026 Prize were: To Rest Our Minds and Bodies by Harriet Armstrong (Les Fugitives); We Pretty Pieces of Flesh by Colwill Brown (Chatto & Windus, Vintage); Under the Blue by Suzannah V. Evans (Bloomsbury Poetry); Open, Heaven by Seán Hewitt (Jonathan Cape, Vintage); and Borderline Fiction by Derek Owusu (Canongate).
The 2026 Prize was judged by Irenosen Okojie, the award-winning Nigerian British author of Curandera, Butterfly Fish, Speak Gigantular and Nudibranch, along with: Joe Dunthorne, poet and novelist, whose debut Submarine, was translated into fifteen languages and made into an award-winning film; Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe, poet, pacifist and fabulist; Prajwal Parajuly, author of The Gurkha’s Daughter: Stories and Land Where I Flee, a novel, whose work has been nominated for the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize; and Eley Williams, acclaimed author of Moderate to Poor, Occasionally Good and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, whose work has been nominated for the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize.
Sasha Debevec-McKenney joins an astonishing list of writers to have been awarded this prestigious prize, including Yasmin Zaher, Caleb Azumah Nelson, Arinze Ifeakandu, Patricia Lockwood, Max Porter, Raven Leilani, Bryan Washington, Maggie Shipstead, Guy Gunaratne, and Kayo Chingonyi.
For further information, please contact:
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NOTES TO EDITORS
About the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize
Launched in 2006, the annual Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize is one of the most prestigious awards for young writers, aimed at encouraging raw creative talent worldwide. It celebrates and nurtures international literary excellence. Worth £20,000, it is one of the UK’s most prestigious literary prizes as well as one of the world’s largest literary prizes for young writers. Awarded for the best published literary work in the English language, written by an author aged 39 or under, the Prize celebrates the international world of fiction in all its forms including poetry, novels, short stories and drama. The prize is named after the Swansea-born writer, Dylan Thomas, and celebrates his 39 years of creativity and productivity. One of the most influential, internationally renowned writers of the mid-twentieth century, the prize invokes his memory to support the writers of today and nurture the talents of tomorrow.
About the winner: Sasha Debevec-McKenney
Sasha Debevec-McKenney, Joy Is My Middle Name (Fitzcarraldo Editions)
Sasha Debevec-McKenney’s poems have appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Review of Books and the Yale Review. She was the 2020-2021 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the University of Wisconsin and is currently a creative writing fellow at Emory University. She lives in Decatur, Georgia.
About the Judging Panel for the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize 2026
Irenosen Okojie (Chair) is an award-winning Nigerian British author whose work pushes the boundaries of form, language and ideas. Her novels, Curandera, Butterfly Fish, short story collections, Speak Gigantular and Nudibranch, have won and been nominated for multiple awards. Her writing has been featured in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The Observer, The Guardian and the Huffington Post. She co-presented the BBC’s Turn Up for The Books podcast, alongside Simon Savidge and Bastille frontman Dan Smith. Her work has been optioned for the screen. She has judged various literary prizes including the BBC National Short Story Award and the Dublin Literary Award. She was a judge for the 2023 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Formerly the Vice Chair of the Royal Society of Literature, she was awarded an MBE For Services to Literature in 2021 and selected as a visionary talent in The Next 25 Visionaries to Watch list. She is the director and founder of Black to the Future Festival.
Joe Dunthorne is a poet and novelist. His debut novel, Submarine, was translated into fifteen languages and made into an award-winning film. His second novel, Wild Abandon, won the Royal Society of Literature’s Encore Award. His debut poetry collection, O Positive, was published by Faber & Faber in 2019. His latest book, Children of Radium – a memoir about family and chemical weapons – was published in April 2025 and was adapted as a podcast for BBC Radio 4. He was born in Swansea and lives in London.
Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe is a poet, pacifist and fabulist. Auguries of a Minor God, her first collection, (Faber, 2021) was a finalist for the Dylan Thomas Prize, John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize, Michael Murphy Memorial Prize and the Butler Literary Award, and chosen as a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, National Poetry Day Recommendation, Shakespeare & Co. Year of Reading Selection, and a Book of the Year by both The Irish Times and The Irish Independent. She was appointed the Rooney Writer-in-Residence at Trinity College Dublin (2023), Literature Ireland Artist-in-Residence at Centre Culturel Irlandais Paris (2024), and the Heaney-Miłosz Writer-in-Residence in Kraków (2025). She serves as a member of the Expert Advisory Committee to Culture Ireland and the board of the Dublin Book Festival.
Prajwal Parajuly is the author of The Gurkha’s Daughter: Stories and Land Where I Flee, a novel. Prajwal’s works have been nominated for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Mogford Prize in the UK, the Emile Guimet Prize and the First Novel Prize in France, and The Story Prize in the US. Land Where I Flee also won the Prix Littéraire Chambre de Commerce et d’Industrie Franco-Indienne 2024. Prajwal teaches fiction at Krea University in South India and lives between New York and Sri City. Karma and Lola, his children’s book, is forthcoming from Tate Books in late 2026.
Eley Williams is the author of the short story collection Attrib. — awarded both the Republic of Consciousness Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize — and the Betty Trask Award-winning novel The Liar’s Dictionary. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and lives in Oxfordshire.