Richard Flanagan knocks back $100k literature prize over sponsor’s fossil fuel links

Acclaimed author Richard Flanagan has refused to accept almost $100,000 for winning a British literature award until the prize’s major sponsor releases a plan to divest from fossil fuels.

Flanagan won the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction for his latest book, Question 7, at a ceremony in London on Tuesday night (Wednesday AEDT).

Richard Flanagan calls Question 7 a “love note to my parents and my island home”.Credit: Adam Gibson

But in a pre-recorded acceptance speech, the Booker Prize-winner said he “will delay taking receipt of the money” until Baillie Gifford, an investment company, unveiled a plan to reduce its direct investment in fossil fuels and increase its renewable energy investments.

Flanagan, who is currently hiking through Tasmania, thanked the company for helping fund the £50,000 ($97,261) prize and noted it had an “already minimal” investment in hydrocarbons and saw no future in them.

“Yet, my soul would be troubled if I did not say that the very forests and heathlands, in which I am camped tonight – unique in the world – are existentially threatened by the climate crisis,” he said.

“And were I not to speak of the terrifying impact fossil fuels are having on my island home – that same vanishing world that spurred to write Question 7 – I would be untrue to the spirit of my book.”

According to Baillie Gifford’s climate report released in May, the UK fund manager’s total emissions from all holdings in 2023 was equivalent to about 50 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. Using this report, a Scottish investigative journalism platform calculated Baillie Gifford had up to £5 billion invested in companies which make money from oil, coal or gas.

The Baillie Gifford Prize judges described Question 7 as “an astonishingly accomplished meditation on memory, history, trauma, love and death – and an intricately woven exploration of the chains of consequence that frame a life”.

Flanagan stressed he was grateful to win the award and beat out five other “exemplary” books on the shortlist, including the memoir by Pulitzer Prize winner Viet Thanh Nguyen.

“No one tonight should regard my words as criticism of Baillie Gifford, but it’s opposite. It is belief in Baillie Gifford’s good faith and the seeking of a way forward,” he said.

Question 7, by Richard Flanagan.

“When we stumble, when we weary, it is sometimes helpful to have a friend to urge us on to our destination. I would welcome an opportunity to speak with Baillie Gifford’s board. Both to thank them for their generosity, and also to describe how fossil fuels are destroying my country.

“How, as each of us is guilty, each of us too bears a responsibility to act.”

Flanagan pointed to some major booksellers being owned by oil companies and other publishers being owned by “fascists and authoritarians” as evidence that: “None of us are clean; all of us are complicit.”

He said when Baillie Gifford released a plan to divest from fossil fuels he would “be grateful not only for this generous gift, but for all the knowledge that by coming together in good faith, with respect and good will, it remains possible yet to make this world better”.

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