Booker nominee Luke Kennard credits Chard teachers with encouraging his writing

Luke Kennard, shortlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize for his novel Black Bag, has credited teachers at his former school in Chard, Somerset, with encouraging his writing. He singled out a former head of English who read his stories during breaks and left him suggestions.

Kennard told BBC News that the teachers who encouraged his writing were foundational to him. He said Paul Coffman, the former head of English at Holyrood Academy, was the first person who got him to take his writing seriously.

Coffman read Kennard’s short stories during break times and returned them with notes and suggestions, Kennard said. Speaking about teachers who recognise a pupil’s interest, he told the BBC: ‘It just can't be exaggerated how much difference a teacher can make when they find a kid who has a passion for their subjects.’

School years in Chard

Kennard attended Holyrood Academy from 1992 to 1999, studying English Literature at both GCSE and A-level. His comments identify encouragement he received while at school; they describe what those teachers did for him as a young writer.

‘You stay in your room playing the clarinet or writing a poem,’ he said. ‘There's a certain virtue to being a little bit bored sometimes, and just having to amuse yourself.’ He described that experience in Chard as part of his creative impulse.

Holyrood Academy said it was ‘thrilled’ by Kennard’s Booker nomination. The school called his praise for Coffman ‘a moving reminder of the lasting impact teachers can have on the lives and achievements of their students’.

The novel behind the nomination

Black Bag is one of six novels on the 2026 Booker Prize shortlist. The Booker Prize Foundation describes its central character as an out-of-work actor paid to attend university lectures while zipped inside a black leather bag as part of a psychology experiment.

The premise draws on an experiment Kennard encountered while researching another subject. In an August interview with the Booker Prize Foundation, he said he had found the original black-bag experiment by accident and became more interested in the person inside the bag than in its results.

Kennard described the novel’s narrator as a struggling actor. He told the Booker Prize Foundation that the book concerns trying to be an artist when arts and culture are systematically undervalued. He also identified self-belief, doubt and the shame associated with making art as concerns of the novel.

In a separate interview published by the University of Birmingham, Kennard placed the event that inspired the book at Oregon State University in 1967. He described a person dressed head to toe in a black rectangular bag, sitting silently through lectures and seminars over a semester.

Kennard told the university that the professor observed students’ responses changing from hostility to acceptance and affection. That is Kennard’s account of the historical experiment. His interest as a novelist, he said, was in the actor who agreed to take the role.

In the same interview, Kennard connected the novel to masculinity and the pressure on artists to be publicly visible. His account of the experiment helps explain the setting he chose, while his description of the actor points to the person at the centre of the story.

What happens next

The Booker Prize Foundation says a five-person judging panel chaired by Mary Beard chose the six shortlisted books from 13 longlisted titles. Those 13 had been selected from 163 submissions, putting Kennard’s novel among the final contenders for this year’s award.

For the 2026 prize, eligible fiction was written in English and published in the UK or Ireland between 1 October 2025 and 30 September 2026, according to the Booker Prize Foundation. The award’s timetable places Kennard’s newly shortlisted book alongside five other novels awaiting the judges’ final decision.

The winner is due to be announced at a London ceremony on 9 November. The Booker Prize Foundation says the winner will receive £50,000 and each shortlisted author £2,500. Kennard’s comments about Holyrood Academy came after his place on that shortlist was confirmed.