Turner Tomorrow Fellowship Award

The Turner Tomorrow Fellowship Award (stylized as Turner Tomorrow Fellowship) was a short-lived literary prize launched in 1989 by American media magnate and environmental philanthropist Ted Turner. Conceived to spur fiction addressing pressing global crises—particularly ecological sustainability—it offered a groundbreaking 500,000 grand prize (250,000 cash plus $250,000 promotional funding) for unpublished novels proposing "creative solutions to humanity's urgent problems". The prize sought to harness fiction as a tool for engaging public dialogue on global challenges, reflecting Turner’s commitment to philanthropy exemplified by his founding of the United Nations Foundation.

The prize was awarded only once, in 1991, to Daniel Quinn’s philosophical novel Ishmael, selected from 2,500 submissions by a jury including Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer, authors Ray Bradbury, Wallace Stegner, Peter Matthiessen, and William Styron. gorilla to challenge humanity’s self-centred view of nature, emerged as a foundational text in environmental writing — even as academics criticized its tendency to oversimplify historical contexts. Three additional "Patronage Awards" ($50,000 each) recognized runners-up Sarah Cameron, Janet Keller, and Andy Goldblatt.

Plagued by controversies—including juror disputes over the prize's financial scale and the perceived mismatch between Quinn’s work and the award’s utopia mandate—the fellowship was discontinued after its inaugural cycle. Though its collaboration with the United Nations to distribute winning works as educational materials never materialized, the award is noted as a precursor to contemporary climate-focused literary initiatives. Ishmael’s enduring academic influence, adopted in disciplines from ecology to philosophy, underscores the prize’s legacy in bridging speculative fiction with environmental activism.