About the Prize

The Ved Mehta Prize

The Ved Mehta Prize, in the amount of £10,000, will be given annually to the best book of creative nonfiction published anywhere in English during the preceding calendar year. 

The book may be translated from another language. If a translated book is chosen, the translator will receive an additional prize of £2,000.

A supplementary grant will support an annual Ved Mehta visiting fellowship at the Centre for the Creative and the Critical at Ashoka University. 

The award ceremony will alternate between Balliol College, University of Oxford, and the Centre for the Creative and the Critical at Ashoka University, India.

What is Creative Nonfiction?

Creative nonfiction, in this context, encompasses a book-length work of literary nonfiction. This may include books of essays around a unified theme written for a general audience. It will not include strictly academic work. The award is meant to recognise the more imaginative forms of nonfiction writing, and to acknowledge the stretching of genre-related boundaries in creative nonfiction, which has emerged as a serious alternative to both fiction and academic writing in the 21st century.

Ved Mehta (1934-2021) was a pioneer of many forms of creative nonfiction, ranging from memoir and autobiography to portraits of historians, philosophers, and theologians, as well as criticism and political commentary. The Ved Mehta Prize in Creative Nonfiction is named in recognition of his contribution to nonfiction writing.

Purpose

The Centre for the Creative and the Critical at Ashoka University makes creative nonfiction one of its primary concerns. Its Director, the novelist, essayist, critic, and poet Amit Chaudhuri (Balliol 1987, DPhil English, and Honorary Fellow), has helped give this Prize its conceptual definition:

“Creative nonfiction has emerged as a serious alternative to both fiction and academic writing in the 21st century, and this prize is meant to take note of, and recognise, that fact. By involving both Ashoka University and Balliol College, we hope this will be a genuinely international prize rather than a source of validation located in the West or in one nation or another.”

Selection Process

The Ved Mehta Prize is awarded through a closed nomination process. Neither Balliol College nor Ashoka University accepts applications, submissions or unsolicited nominations.

The Prize is awarded by a panel of three judges chosen by an international advisory board convened by Ashoka University and Balliol College. Judges will be appointed to serve for one year at a time, and never for two years in succession.

2026 Judges:

  • Merve Emre, the Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing and Criticism at Wesleyan University, CT, and Director of the Shapiro Center for Creative Writing and Criticism

  • Seamus Perry, Professor of English Literature in the English Faculty at the University of Oxford and Master of Balliol College, Oxford

  • Vijay Seshadri, Pulitzer-Prize winning author and member of the Faculty of English and Creative Writing at Sarah Lawrence College, NY

Advisory Board

The Advisory Board consists of:

  • Amit Chaudhuri (Centre for the Creative and the Critical, Ashoka University; writer)

  • Edwin Frank (NYRB Classics, New York, NY)

  • Arvind Krishna Mehrotra (Dehradun, India; poet)

  • Linn Cary Mehta (spouse and literary executor of Ved Mehta)

  • Seamus Perry*

*Seamus Perry will step aside from the Advisory Board during any year in which he serves as a judge

Contact

Please note that the Ved Mehta Prize does not accept submissions or unsolicited nominations. For all other enquiries relating to the Ved Mehta Prize, please contact: info@vedmehtaprize.org