The Orwell Prize is Britain’s most prestigious award for writing. Each year a select committee awards the prize—actually four prizes—for work that aims to achieve George Orwell‘s goal “to make political writing into an art”. The long lists for the book prize, blog prize and journalism prize were announced last week. My money is on Christopher Hitchens‘ Arguably for the 2012 book prize.

Picture of George Orwell which appears in an old acreditation for the BNUJ. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’m less certain about the blogger prize. This year’s long list seems to be wanting in independent blogging. In fact, it appears that most of the recognized bloggers actually work for mainstream media outlets. What’s up with that?

Anyway, the prize winners will be named on May 23, 2012.

Related articles

• Slugger Longlisted for this year’s Orwell Prize… (sluggerotoole.com)
• Edward Docx longlisted for Orwell Prize (prospectmagazine.co.uk)
• Orwell prize: four Guardian journalists nominated (guardian.co.uk)
• Christopher Hitchens longlisted for the Orwell prize (guardian.co.uk)
• The Orwell Prize Has a Chance to Redeem Itself (thedailybeast.com)
• Things I learned long-listing the Orwell Prize (hopisen.com)