Announcing the Discoveries Prize winner & scholar 2026
BY Discoveries
28th May 2026
Curtis Brown Creative are proud to partner with the Women’s Prize Trust, the Curtis Brown literary agency and Audible to run Discoveries for a sixth year. This is a unique novel-writing development prize and programme for women writers in the UK and Ireland, who have not been traditionally published in long form.
We're excited to reveal this year's winner and scholar, selected from a record-breaking number of 3,216 entries, chosen for the quality and promise shown in 10,000 words and a synopsis.
These titles were selected by Chair of Judges Kate Mosse CBE, international bestselling novelist and Founder Director of the Women’s Prize, and her judging panel: acclaimed authors Dorothy Koomson and Nussaibah Younis, Curtis Brown literary agent Ciara Finan and Curtis Brown Creative’s founder Anna Davis.
The winner of the prize is Ruixi Zhang, with her witty and gripping literary thriller Confessions of an Alien. Her novel-in-progress follows a young Chinese woman who marries a white man she cannot love in exchange for a visa, but life in London isn't all she hoped it would be. As the winner of Discoveries 2026, Ruixi receives an offer of representation by the Curtis Brown Group, a cash prize of £5,000 and a place on a Curtis Brown Creative six-week online course. In July, she will also join CBC’s specially designed two-week Discoveries Writing Development course alongside the other 15 writers longlisted for Discoveries 2026.
Additionally, Mirha Butt has been named this year’s Discoveries Scholar, winning a place on CBC’s flagship three-month Writing Your Novel course (worth £2,000) to further develop her work-in-progress. Notes from the Valley of Unclaimed Daughters is a multi-generational exploration of womanhood set against the 1990s Kashmiri insurgency.
- Kate Mosse, Chair of Judges, said: ‘It was so hard to choose just one winner, and one scholar, from this year’s excellent shortlist – the future of fiction is in great hands with these six talented writers working on such inspiring novels. But in the end, we were all swept up by the intrigue, the skill and the pace of Confessions of an Alien and couldn’t wait to read more. In Notes From The Valley of Unclaimed Daughters, we hugely admired the author’s ambition and her ability to spin a compelling story out of such complicated history. Congratulations to them both and thank you to my fellow judges for their hard work.’
- Anna Davis, Curtis Brown Creative, and Ciara Finan, Curtis Brown, said: ‘For all of us on ‘Team Disco’ (the nickname for the core Discoveries team at Curtis Brown and Curtis Brown Creative), the thing we love most about our jobs is the opportunity to champion exciting new writing – and we’re hugely looking forward to working with this year’s talented winner and scholar, Ruixi Zhang and Mirha Butt, along with the rest of the vibrant shortlisted and longlisted writers through mentoring and courses. It’s utterly wonderful to see so many successful debuts emerging from Discoveries – and we warmly encourage more unpublished women to use the programme as motivation to start writing that novel you’ve been meaning to get around to, and then to keep going to the end.’
We can't wait for these writers to follow in the footsteps of the growing community of female novelists who first achieved recognition through Discoveries. In the past six years, writers previously longlisted have achieved an impressive number of deals and publications. Between 2024 and mid-2026, six Discoveries authors have published their debut novels, including Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin (2022 Shortlist) and Emma van Straaten (2021 Winner). 11 further authors are set to publish their debuts between now and 2027. Out of 80 longlisted alumni, 40% (32) authors have agents and 21% (17) have book deals, with many others still working on their novels.
Please find our interviews with Discoveries 2026 winner and scholar below.
Winner Interview Ruixi Zhang, Confessions of an Alien
Ruixi Zhang is an exophonic writer based in London. Born and raised in China, she studied English and psychology at Wellesley College, a women’s university in the US, before coming to the UK for an MA in comparative literature at the University of Oxford. Her debut short story appeared in Colorado Review. Her novel-in-progress was longlisted for the Bridport Prize in 2025. An alumna of the HarperCollins Author Academy, she has been awarded the Curtis Brown Creative Breakthrough Scholarship and the Faber Academy Scholarship.
She is currently working on her debut novel, Confessions of an Alien, a literary thriller.
- How does it feel to be named the Discoveries 2026 winner? I am immensely grateful to the Discoveries judges and team, who see something in this dark little story that has, for the past three years, lived in my head and kept me awake at night writing. I also feel indebted to every mentor who has helped me cultivate my intellect and creativity along the way. Winning Discoveries marks for me the beginning of a long and exciting journey. I can’t wait to tell more stories in the years to come!
- When did you begin writing? When I was a kid, I wrote stories and sentimental essays in Chinese. I began writing fiction in English in my early 20s, when I learned about authors like Yiyun Li, whose works showed me that it was possible to write beautifully in a foreign language. Around the same time, I also took a psychology course at university, in which we were asked to create a therapist and a patient character, and write fictitious transcripts of their conversations. That was the first time I wrote anything fictional in English, and the reason why I still enjoy writing dialogues the most!
- What initially inspired your novel-in-progress? My novel was inspired by an image that popped up in my mind: Having just given birth to the child of a white man, a Chinese woman holds the newborn in her arms and is overtaken by a sense of alienation. This novel is the baby. Crafted in a language that is not mine, at times, it feels alien to me. It has invaded and colonised my mind, so that for days and nights I can only think in its language and logic. I have to write to make sense of this process of colonisation, and by doing so, resist it.
- What key themes do you explore in your writing? Alienation and loneliness. I am eternally fascinated by the interiority of outsiders. In my novel-in-progress, there are a few characters who live on the margins for different reasons. I also like to read and write about unhappy marriages, all the illusions, delusions, and disillusionments created by two people who are stuck together in a small, confined space.
- What made you enter Discoveries 2026? I entered Discoveries for the first time in 2025. I was not selected, which motivated me to improve my novel and enter again in 2026. I took the Writing Your Novel course and the Edit & Pitch Your Novel – Advanced course with CBC, which was made possible by the Breakthrough Writers’ Programme scholarship (thank you!). I received invaluable feedback from my tutors Chris, Lauren, Anna, and my peers, which helped me interrogate every scene and hone my pitch.
- Which female authors inspire you to write? Eileen Chang, Toni Morrison, Elena Ferrante, Ottessa Moshfegh. I love the psychological observations in their books, so sharp and full of insights. Many of their female characters have been called ‘unlikable’, which, I think, just means that they are unconventional women who are not afraid to show their teeth – all the more reason to like them!
- What is the best piece of writing advice you've ever received? ‘It’s about empathy.’ When I first started writing fiction in English, I felt very self-conscious about my linguistic abilities. I kind of apologised to my writing professor at university, Micah Nathan, when I handed in my first short story, saying that it was unreadable. He wrote on the blackboard the word ‘empathy’, and told me that fiction writing was not about the language, but about empathy and perspective-taking. This moment has stayed with me. I think, a good story, like empathy, transcends linguistic and cultural barriers, creating a moment of meaningful connection.
Scholar Interview Mirha Butt, Notes From The Valley Of Unclaimed Daughters
Mirha Butt is a London-based public policy and research professional and a recent graduate of the LSE, raised in Watford. She is also an identical twin and the proud owner of a cat called Bibble! Her work centres the complexities of female relationships, whether in friendship, motherhood, sisterhood, or elsewhere.
Her novel-in-progress, Notes From The Valley Of Unclaimed Daughters, is set in Kashmir during the 1990’s insurgency and its aftermath. The novel was inspired in part by her grandfather, who was born in Azad Kashmir, and by his commitment to human rights and freedom from occupation.
- How does it feel to be named the Discoveries Scholar for 2026? It feels surreal to have something so personal and quietly important to me recognised in such a huge way! As someone who's learned writing purely through reading and writing itself, I’m also so excited for the opportunity to further develop my novel through Curtis Brown Creative’s Writing Your Novel course. I’m hugely grateful to Discoveries, the team behind it, and the wonderful alumni and fellow longlistees I’ve met along the way.
- When did you begin writing? I started writing when I was twelve, inspired in part by my mum, an English teacher who raised me on the belief that reading is good for the mind and soul. My first few attempts were, frankly, dreadful, but I adore them for the same reason I adore the work I write now: every word helped make me the writer I am.
- What initially inspired your novel-in-progress? It began with my grandfather, who was born in Azad Kashmir and has a deep commitment to dignity, human rights, and freedom from occupation. From there, the novel grew into an attempt to understand how conflict echoes through families, especially through women’s lives. It became a story about memory, inheritance, and the things women carry for each other.
- What key themes do you explore in your writing? I’m drawn to complicated womanhood, female relationships, and the beauty and pain of loving other women—in friendships, motherhood, sisterhood, and everything in between. I also explore grief, desire, inherited trauma, resistance, and the way ordinary life keeps going even when history is trying to kick the door down.
- What made you enter Discoveries 2026? I wanted exposure, community, and a reason to stop quietly doubting myself in a corner. As a young woman of colour, I’ve had a lot of imposter syndrome, so Discoveries felt like a real chance to meet like-minded writers and industry experts.
- Which female authors inspire you to write? So many, but I keep returning to writers like Arundhati Roy and Kamila Shamsie for their ability to write politically urgent stories with so much emotional depth and beauty, and their refusal to flatten women into simple stories.
- What is the best piece of writing advice you've ever received? Your first draft probably won’t be good, and that’s actually the point. As a perfectionist, I tend to want every sentence polished before I’ve even finished the chapter, but the best advice I’ve had is simply: get the words down. Editing can come later. First, you have to give yourself something to work with.
Thank you once again to everyone who entered their novels-in-progress to Discoveries this year. We were deeply impressed by the variety of genres and topics explored as well as the quality of the writing.
You can read all about the Discoveries 2026 shortlist here and the longlist here.
Watch this space, Discoveries 2027 will open for submissions this September. Subscribe to our newsletter to be notified when we open for entries.