Literature Wales announced that A Room Above a Shop by Anthony Shapland is the winner of the 2026 Wales Book of the Year, which was created to "celebrate and platform talented Welsh writers who excel in their fields in both English and Welsh." Mererid Hopwood was the winner of the overall Welsh-language prize with her poetry collection, Mae.
Category awards were presented in both languages for poetry, creative nonfiction, fiction, children & young people, and people's choice. One of the category winners in each language went on to win the overall prize. See the complete list of winners here.
Each category winner took home £1,000 (about $1,340), with one category winner in each language going on to receive an additional £3,000 (about $4,020) for the overall award.
On behalf of the judging panel, Catrin Kean called A Room Above a Shop "a gorgeous work of art. A concealed love story, where the concealment is so much part of it that even the characters' names are withheld. We loved the visual prose, the sense of place, and the love that was woven through every line. With its tender, precise, poetic prose, this a thrilling debut novel. We all felt that this was a special new voice in the Welsh literary landscape."