The Michael Jacobs Foundation for Travel Writing

Michael Jacobs 

Michael Jacobs was a prolific and highly respected author, writing some 30 books, mainly on travel. Increasingly, his work came to focus on Hispanic world in all its aspects and he embrace the culture, food, and unique character in the Spanish-speaking countries of Central and South America. 

After Michael’s untimely death, his brother Francis established The Michael Jacobs Foundation promote travel writing and particularly that which highlighted the Hispanic World. 

The annual Michael Jacobs Travel Writing Prize The Foundation is the primary source of finance for the annual Michael Jacobs Travel Writing Prize, which is organised in conjunction with the Hay Literary Festival and the Fundacion Gabo. 

The Prize, worth $7,500, can be for work written in English or Spanish and this year will see the nineth edition of the prize being awarded. While most of the winners, to date, have been journalists, the subject matter has ranged from : 

• the consequences of the African slave trade on both sides of the Atlantic, 
• what life is now like in the Falklands/Malvinas after the invasion and war
• the significance of the jaguar for Latin America, and 
• the ruins left behind by some Latin American utopias. 

Applications will be invited in November 2022 when full details of the application process and deadline will be available on the Fundacion Gabo website. 

The winner will be announced in January 2023. 

The Fundacion Gabo, named after the Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and promotes new Latin American journalism. 

This year, two previous winners of the Prize are organising a travel writers workshop for travel journalists.

This will be held as part of the Hay Festival, in Arequipa in Peru, in early November 2022.

www.fundaciongabo.org/es 

For more information or to log and interest now contact : Francis Jacobs at francisbjacobs@gmail.com