Katharine Quarmby

2025 – Shortlisted, New Angle Prize for Literature,  for The Low Road. The judges said: “The setting of the Waveney Valley hooked the reader with a compelling story that was based in fact. It was an eye-opening experience drawing on grim events, which evoked the time and period the story took place, particularly through its use of language. It had a precarious quality that evoked a dark and suffering aspect of history as Hannah struggles to make her way in the world.”

2025-2026 – Advisory Fellow, Royal Literary Fund

2024, IJ4EU environmental investigative journalism grant for a cross-border, six country wide investigation into flooding.

2023 – Silver Medal, Historical Women’s Fiction, Coffee Pot Book Club award/Honourable Mention, Historical Romance, Coffee Pot Book Club Award

2023 – Journalismfund Europe grant, the Hidden Threat: Asbestos in Drinking Water (also covered the waste industry)

2023-2025 – Recipient of a Royal Literary Fund Fellowship, to support writers to finish works and to also work in universities

2023 – Shortlisted, Freelance Journalism Awards/Journalism.co.uk for best investigation (on a series of articles looking at the environmental racism resulting in the hazardous location of sites for Gypsies and Travellers in the UK)

2023 – Developing your Creative Practice Grant, Arts Council England (to develop a three part novel series)

2022 – Journalismfund Europe grant, investigating Stranded: the Impact of Asbestos in the Maritime Industry

2022 – Shortlisted, European Parliament/Daphne Caruana Galizia Prize for Journalism, for Pesticides at Work cross-border investigation

2021 Journalismfund Europe grant, investigating Asbestos: the Lethal Legacy

2021 – Journalismfund Europe grant, investigating Pesticides at Work project

2021 – Paul Hamlyn Foundation Ideas and Pioneers Grant (to develop a reporting/research project on the location of Traveller sites in hazardous and environmentally injust areas)

2018 – Winner, Silver Medal IPPY award

2017 Aesop Accolade, American Folklore Society

2017 – Shortlisted, Little Rebels award (for Ossiri and the Bala Mengro, pub 2016)

2017, Shortlisted, Hampshire Illustrated Book Libraries award (Ossiri and the Bala Mengro, pub 2016)

2016 – Bronze Award from Primary Teacher Update magazine, for the picture book, Ossiri and the Bala Mengro, co-written with Richard O’Neill, published by Child’s Play International.

2016 – Authors’ Foundation Grant, to travel to Australia to research novel The Low Road 

2015-2017 – Recipient of a Royal Literary Fund Fellowship, to support writers who also work in universities.

2014 – Katharine was shortlisted for the Bread and Roses award, for her book No Place to Call Home.

2012 – Authors’ Foundation Grant, to support the writing of No Place to Call Home.

2012 – Katharine was shortlisted for the Paul Foot Award for campaigning journalism, by the Guardian and Private Eye magazine, for her five years of campaigning against disability hate.

2011 – Scapegoat won the Ability Media International Prize for Literature in November 2011.

2010 – Katharine and her fellow volunteer co-ordinators of the Disability Hate Crime Network, were honoured with Radar’s Human Rights People of the Year Award, for their work on disability hate crime.

2005- Katharine was short listed for the Orange Prize/Harpers and Queen short story competition. In the same year she was long-listed for the Paul Foot award for her investigations into school meals with Felicity Lawrence.

1999 – Katharine and Fergal Keane won the One World Trust Award for best News Film for their films about Rwanda and were shortlisted for the same prize by Amnesty International. In the same year the science team on Newsnight, of which she was one of the two producers, won the Royal Television Award, for Science Coverage.