Author and poet Rebecca Perry has won the 2026 Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize for May We Feed the King, which has been praised as a “delicious and dreamlike story”.
Selected from a shortlist of six novellas, May We Feed the King is the story of a present-day curator whose job it is to decorate rooms in historic houses. (“When you see a replica feast scene in the great hall of an old building, I’m the guy who put the pomegranates next to the pies.”) He becomes more obsessed with the subject of his latest commission, a medieval king whose own story about his reluctance to rule unfolds in parallel.
Melissa Harrison wrote in her Guardian review, “This is a highly crafted puzzle-box of a book that deliberately misleads the reader at every turn” and “richly rewards those who approach it with curiosity”.
Perry will receive £5,000 and a “promise of ongoing commitment” to his writing career. Voted by Waterstones booksellers, the award recognizes the year’s outstanding work of debut fiction across all genres.
Bea Carvalho, head of books at Waterstones, praised Perry’s “clear, serene prose” and described the novel as “a delicious and dreamlike tale full of curiosity and nostalgia”.
Carvalho said, “With a poet’s eye for detail and a keen sense of humor, Perry grapples with the slippery nature of memory and the burden of power.” “Rebecca Perry is a writer we’re very excited about and we can’t wait to see what she does next.”
Perry, who is from London, has published two collections of poetry, Beauty/Beauty and Stone Fruit, several pamphlets, and a work of creative nonfiction, On Trampolining. His poetry has been shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize, while his first collection won the Michael Murphy Memorial Prize.
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Writing We Feed the King, Perry wanted to explore “historical fiction as a genre, and how we describe history” as well as “the capacities of loneliness and imagination, and ultimately what happens when a person rejects what is expected of them by refusing to step into the tyranny of power”.
This year’s other shortlisted novels were Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash, Honey in the Wound by Xiong Han, Under Water by Tara Menon, A Private Man by Stephanie Si-Quia and The Infamous Gilberts by Angela Tomasky.
Waterstones launched the award in 2022. Previous winners include Tess Gunty’s The Rabbit Hutch, Alice Winn’s In Memoriam and Ferdia Lennon’s Glorious Exploits. Last year’s winner was The Artist by Lucy Steeds.
