Sophie Elmhirst

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Sophie Elmhirst is a British journalist and author. Her work Maurice and Maralyn, describing the experiences of Maurice and Maralyn Bailey who spent 118 days adrift in a liferaft in 1973, won the "Golden Nero" as the overall winner of the 2024 Nero Book Awards. [1] [2]

Contents

In 2020 she won the features writer of the year award in the British Journalism Awards. [3] The articles cited in the award were on domestic abuse, the tampon industry, and a cleaner's experience of working during the Covid pandemic. [4] She was long-listed for the 2020 Orwell Prize for Journalism, [5] the cited works being the second and third listed above and an article on maternity care. [6]

She writes for publications including The Guardian 's "Long Read", The Economist 's 1843 digital magazine, The Gentlewoman and Harpers Bazaar . [7]

Maurice and Maralyn

Elmhirst has described how she came across the story of Maurice and Maralyn Bailey during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom, when "It was cold and miserable and I was sitting at my desk with the kids going crazy downstairs." She found Alvaro Cerezo's website where he recorded tales of castaway and stranded people, and was intrigued by the fact that this English couple's experience was so little known. Cerezo's site included photographs of pages of Marilyn's diaries, and he had recorded an interview with Maurice in 2017. [7]

Elmhirst's first book Maurice and Maralyn was published in 2024 under the Vintage imprint of Penguin Books ( ISBN   9781529931495).

In March 2025 it was awarded the "Golden Nero" as the overall winner of the Nero Book Awards, having previously won the non-fiction category. [2] Speaking at the award ceremony, Bill Bryson, chair of the judges, said:

Maurice and Maralyn is an enthralling, engrossing story of survival and the resilience of the human spirit. Impressively novelistic ... It is a story of a marriage as much as of an adventure at sea, one that subtly explores the dynamics of a relationship under the greatest imaginable stress. ... Elmhirst’s writing is understated but powerful ... We unanimously agreed that Maurice and Maralyn is a non-fiction work that reaches the highest literary eminence ... [8]

References

  1. ↑ Creamer, Ella (5 March 2025). "Sophie Elmhirst's Maurice and Maralyn wins Nero book of the year prize". The Guardian. Retrieved 13 March 2025.
  2. 1 2 "Sophie Elmhirst - Maurice and Maralyn: An Extraordinary True Story of Shipwreck, Survival and Love". Nero Book Awards. Retrieved 13 March 2025.
  3. ↑ "Features Journalism – British Journalism Awards". Press Gazette. Retrieved 13 March 2025.
  4. ↑ Elmhirst, Sophie (31 October 2019). "'Intimate terrorism': how an abusive relationship led a young woman to kill her partner". The Guardian. Retrieved 13 March 2025.
    Elmhirst, Sophie (11 February 2020). "Tampon wars: the battle to overthrow the Tampax empire". The Guardian. Retrieved 13 March 2025.
    Elmhirst, Sophie (30 June 2020). "'You have to take action': one hospital cleaner's journey through the pandemic". The Guardian. Retrieved 13 March 2025.
  5. ↑ "Sophie Elmhirst". www.orwellfoundation.com. The Orwell Foundation. Retrieved 13 March 2025.
  6. ↑ Elmhirst, Sophie (3 August 2020). "The battle over birth". The Economist. Retrieved 13 March 2025.
  7. 1 2 Sanderson, Caroline (1 December 2023). "Sophie Elmhirst on discovering the remarkable story of Maurice and Maralyn". The Bookseller. Retrieved 13 March 2025.
  8. ↑ "Maurice and Maralyn by Sophie Elmhirst announced as winner of Nero Gold Prize 2024". www.brunel.ac.uk. Brunel University of London. 6 March 2025. Retrieved 13 March 2025.
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