Diana McCaulay Wins 2026 RSL Ondaatje Prize for A House for Miss Pauline

Jamaican literary veteran Diana McCaulay has secured the 2026 RSL Ondaatje Prize, one of the major international awards in literature, for her novel A House for Miss Pauline.

The Royal Society of Literature in the United Kingdom presents the prize each year to a work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry that delivers an especially vivid sense of place. McCaulay’s Jamaica-centred novel earned the honour and the £10,000 award.

She collected the prize on June 1 during a ceremony at Two Temple Place in London. The result was noted by literary publications outside Jamaica, including Books+Publishing and Repeating Islands.

In an interview reported by Jamaicans.com, the Kingston-based writer said the announcement stunned her. She had gone through several of the shortlisted books and believed she knew which one would win, so hearing her own name left her motionless until someone prompted her to go forward.

Her son, Jonathan Chambers, was with her at the event and helped by speaking for her when she could not immediately find words. McCaulay later said the night was difficult to fully remember because of the shock.

In the days after the ceremony, she publicly thanked the people who had backed the book and her career, naming her son, her publishers at Dialogue Books, editor Hannah Chukwu, agent Laetitia Rutherford and her husband, Fred.

A House for Miss Pauline is published by Dialogue Books in the United Kingdom and Algonquin Books in the United States. The novel follows a 99-year-old Jamaican woman as she moves through questions of memory, family and belonging.

When announcing the award, the Royal Society of Literature pointed to McCaulay’s own view that bringing out the character of a place sits at the heart of her fiction. The judges also commended the novel for its strong treatment of colonialism and slavery’s lasting impact in Jamaica.

McCaulay was the sole Caribbean author among the six shortlisted writers for this year’s prize. The same novel had previously won the 2025 CARICOM Prize for Caribbean Literature, making the Ondaatje win another major milestone and possibly its most visible international honour so far.

Outside of literature, McCaulay is also recognised as the founder of the Jamaica Environment Trust and for years of environmental advocacy in Jamaica. She has written six novels and her record includes two Commonwealth Short Story Prize wins, the Gold Musgrave Medal and Jamaica’s Order of Distinction, with this latest award further strengthening her standing as one of Jamaica’s leading literary figures.