Hulme won the Atlantic Nonfiction Prize for The Wild Place, her acclaimed account of postwar refugee relief work in Europe.
In 1952, Kathryn Hulme was awarded the prestigious Atlantic Nonfiction Prize for her manuscript The Wild Place, a searing and deeply humane account of her years working with displaced persons in postwar Europe. The book drew directly from her firsthand experiences administering the Wildflecken displaced-persons camp in occupied Germany while serving with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) between 1945 and 1950.
The Atlantic Nonfiction Prize, sponsored by The Atlantic Monthly and its associated publishing house, was one of the most respected literary honors of its time for works of nonfiction, and winning it brought Hulme significant critical attention and a wider readership. The Wild Place was subsequently published in 1953 to strong reviews, cementing her reputation as a serious literary chronicler of the human cost and moral complexity of the refugee crises that followed World War II.
This recognition was pivotal in Hulme's career trajectory: it validated her transition from prewar travel writer to a more socially engaged, morally probing author, and it provided the platform and confidence that would eventually lead to her most famous work, The Nun's Story, published just a few years later in 1956. The award remains a testament to the power of witness literature written by women who directly experienced the humanitarian catastrophes of the 20th century.