Author and poet Rebecca Perry has won the 2026 Waterstones debut fiction prize for her novel May We Feed the King, praised as a 'delicious and dream-like tale'. The award, voted for by Waterstones booksellers, recognises the year's outstanding work of debut fiction across all genres and comes with a £5,000 prize and a commitment to her writing career.
The novel follows a present-day museum curator who dresses rooms in historic houses, who becomes obsessed with a medieval king whose own story of reluctance to rule unfolds in parallel. Judges praised Perry's 'crisp, cool prose' and 'poet's eye for detail', with Waterstones head of books Bea Carvalho describing the book as 'steeped in curiosity and nostalgia'.
Perry, from London, has published two poetry collections, Beauty/Beauty and Stone Fruit, along with several pamphlets and a work of creative nonfiction, On Trampolining. Her poetry has been shortlisted for the TS Eliot prize, and her debut collection won the Michael Murphy memorial prize.
The other shortlisted novels this year were Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash, Honey in the Wound by Jiyoung Han, Under Water by Tara Menon, A Private Man by Stephanie Sy-Quia and The Infamous Gilberts by Angela Tomaski. The Waterstones debut fiction prize was launched in 2022, with previous winners including Tess Gunty, Alice Winn and Ferdia Lennon.
