The Orwell Foundation – 2025 Political Writing and Fiction Prizes

Client

Team

Year

Every year, The Orwell Foundation awards writing that embodies George Orwell’s own ambition ‘to make political writing into an art’, with an aim to encourage excellence in writing and reporting about politics.

In 2025, we worked closely with the Foundation on their Orwell Prizes for Political Writing and Political Fiction, leading on the PR and social media strategy. It was a standout year with big names on the judging panel, a shortlist of acclaimed authors and two exceptional winners. Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina posthumously won the prize for Political Writing and Irish author Donal Ryan won the Political Fiction prize.

Work started with creating a media strategy covering all the announcements, from judges to finalists to winner. We developed a plan to amplify the client’s social media presence and engagement, working alongside the authors to produce content, including suite of short video Q&As, e.g.: Simon Parkin and Jo McMillan. We secured a feature opportunity with LitHub spotlighting an array of the finalist authors on why they write. The campaign culminated in wide-reaching press coverage, securing over 37 pieces for the winners announcement. This included live interviews on BBC Radio 4 World Tonight and RTÉ Radio 1 to feature interviews in The Irish Times and news stories in National and International press, including The Kyiv Independent and The Guardian US.

The impact from our social media management through the campaign was transformational, with the client’s Instagram account almost doubling in followers. Individual posts saw an incredible increase in engagement, including a 3645% year-on-year increase in reach and +801% in engagement on the Political Writing winner announcement and a 473% increase in reach and +626% in engagement on the Political Fiction winner announcement.