Maria Reva wins the Gordon Burn Prize 2026
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Maria Reva was announced as the winner of the £10,000 Gordon Burn Prize 2026 for Endling, published by Virago, on 5 March. The ceremony took place at Northern Stage, in Gordon Burn’s home city of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Maria was joined by her fellow shortlisted authors: Omar El Akkad, Sarah Hall, Elizabeth Lovatt, Anthony Shapland and Morgan Talty for an in-conversation event hosted by Sarah Shaffi and there was music from singer-songwriter Richard Dawson.
Endling begins in Ukraine, 2022. Yeva is a maverick scientist who scours the country’s forests and valleys, trying and failing to breed rare snails while her relatives urge her to settle down and start a family of her own. What they don’t know: Yeva already dates plenty of men – not for love, but to fund her work – entertaining Westerners who come to Ukraine on guided romance tours believing they’ll find docile brides untainted by feminism. Nastia and her sister, Solomiya, are also entangled in the booming marriage industry, posing as a hopeful bride and her translator while secretly searching for their missing mother, who vanished after years of fierce activism against the romance tours. So begins a journey of a lifetime across a country on the brink of war: three angry women, a truckful of kidnapped bachelors, and Lefty, a last-of-his-kind snail with one final shot at perpetuating his species.
Maria Reva writes fiction and opera libretti. She is the author of Good Citizens Need Not Fear, set in an apartment block in Ukraine. In November 2022, she was included on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s list of sanctioned Canadian citizens who are forbidden from entering Russia. Maria was born in Ukraine and grew up in Vancouver, Canada.
Maria Reva, said: “Endling doesn’t have a traditional ending, because it’s about a war that hasn’t ended. My grandfather remains in his besieged city of Kherson, Ukraine. A few weeks ago, Russian artillery projectiles landed in the courtyard of his apartment block, blew out his windows. He was sitting at his writing desk. Somehow, he was spared.
“Endling is about many things, but at its core, it reckons with the place of fiction in today’s world. I believe that fiction is aching to find a new container, and a prize like this one supports (celebrates!) that mad search. I am deeply honoured.”
Val McDermid, Chair of Judges, said: “From submissions to our final decision, it’s been a joy to be a judge on the 2026 Gordon Burn Prize. We’ve had an astonishing range of books – fiction and non-fiction – and I’ve encountered writers whose work I hadn’t previously discovered, as well as those who have previously given me great pleasure. My fellow judges have made the process itself part of the pleasure, sharing their honest critical views and their enthusiasm. And in the end, our winner is one that I believe Gordon himself would have enjoyed.”
The Gordon Burn Prize recognises exceptional writing which has an unconventional perspective, style or subject matter and often defies easy categorisation. It celebrates literary outliers and daring and experimental work that often speaks to broader societal issues. The prize was founded in 2012 by New Writing North, Faber, and the Gordon Burn Trust. It is open to all writers of any nationality for work written in English and published in the UK the previous year. It is supported by Newcastle University and the Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts (NCLA).