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Honoring Female Authors
Created to annually honor the best work of fiction by female authors through "a group of publishing industry professionals including agents, booksellers, critics, journalists, and librarians who were frustrated by what they perceived as chauvinism in the selection of finalists for literary awards such as the Booker Prize." The winner receives a Bessie statue and 30,000 GBP. https://www.britannica.com/art/Baileys-Womens-Prize-for-Fiction https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-44382391 -
First Award - A Spell of Winter, Helen Dunmore
SYNOPSIS: Catherine and her brother, Rob, don't know why they have been abandoned by their parents. Incarcerated in the enormous country house of their grandfather & the man from nowhere & they create a refuge against their family's dark secrets and the outside world as it moves towards WWI. As time passes their sibling love deepens and crosses into forbidden territory, but they are not as alone in the house as they believe. https://www.womensprizeforfiction.co.uk/about/previous-winners/1996 -
Home, Marilynne Robinson
SYNOPSIS: The novel chronicles the life of the Boughton family, specifically the father, Reverend Robert Boughton, and Glory and Jack, two of Robert's adult children who return home to Gilead, Iowa. A companion to Gilead, Home is an independent novel that takes place concurrently. https://www.womensprizeforfiction.co.uk/about/previous-winners/2009 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_(Robinson_novel) -
The Lacuna, Barbara Kingslover
SYNOPSIS: In her most accomplished novel, Barbara Kingsolver takes us on an epic journey from the Mexico City of artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo to the America of Pearl Harbor, FDR, and J. Edgar Hoover. The Lacuna is a poignant story of a man pulled between two nations as they invent their modern identities. https://www.womensprizeforfiction.co.uk/about/previous-winners/2010 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6433752-the-lacuna?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=kfryikS4N5&rank=1 -
The Tiger's Wife, Tea Obreht
SYNOPSIS: Set in an unnamed Balkan country, spanning the mid 20th century to the early 21st century. Features a young doctor's relationship with her grandfather and the stories he tells her about the 'deathless man' who meets him several times in different places and never changes, and a deaf-mute girl from his childhood village who befriends a tiger that has escaped from a zoo. https://www.womensprizeforfiction.co.uk/about/previous-winners/2011 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tiger%27s_Wife -
The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller
SYNOPSIS: The Song of Achilles, set in Greece, tells the story of a love affair between Achilles and Patroclus.[4] Miller was inspired by the account of the two men from Homer's Iliad and said she wanted to explore who Patroclus was and what he meant to Achilles https://www.womensprizeforfiction.co.uk/about/previous-winners/2012 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeline_Miller#The_Song_of_Achilles -
May We Be Forgiven, A.M. Holmes
SYNOPSIS: Harry has spent a lifetime watching his younger brother, George, a taller, smarter and more successful high-flying TV executive, acquire a covetable wife, two kids and a beautiful home. But Harry, a historian and Nixon scholar, knows George has a murderous temper and when George loses control the result is an act so shocking that both brothers are hurled into entirely new lives in which they both must seek absolution. https://www.womensprizeforfiction.co.uk/about/previous-winners/2013 -
A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing, Eimear McBride
SYNOPSIS: This stream of consciousness novel explores an Irish girl's relationship with her disabled brother, religious mother, and her own troubled sexuality. https://www.womensprizeforfiction.co.uk/about/previous-winners/2014 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Girl_Is_a_Half-formed_Thing -
How to be Both, Ali Smith
SYNOPSIS: The story is told from two perspectives: those of George, a pedantic 16-year-old girl living in contemporary Cambridge, and Francesco del Cossa, an Italian renaissance artist responsible for painting a series of frescoes in the 'Hall of the Months' at the Palazzo Schifanoia. https://www.womensprizeforfiction.co.uk/about/previous-winners/2015 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Be_Both -
The Glorious Heresies, Lisa McInerney
SYNOPSIS: One messy murder affects the lives of five misfits who exist on the fringes of Ireland's post-crash society. https://www.womensprizeforfiction.co.uk/about/previous-winners/2016 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24515225-the-glorious-heresies?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=nh6jT7Yx9y&rank=1 -
The Power, Naomi Alderman
SYNOPSIS: Its central premise is women developing the ability to release electrical jolts from their fingers, thus leading them to become the dominant gender. https://www.womensprizeforfiction.co.uk/about/previous-winners/2017 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_(Alderman_novel) -
Home Fire, Kamila Shamsie
SYNOPSIS: Reimagines Sophocles' play Antigone unfolding among British Muslims https://www.womensprizeforfiction.co.uk/about/previous-winners/2018 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Fire_(novel) -
An American Marriage, Tayari Jones
SYNOPSIS: The novel focuses on the marriage of a middle-class African-American couple, Roy and Celestial, who live in Atlanta and whose lives are torn apart when Roy is wrongfully convicted of a rape he did not commit. https://www.womensprizeforfiction.co.uk/about/previous-winners/2019 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_American_Marriage -
2020 Judges Announced
The judges for the 25th Anniversary are: Martha Lane Fox: business woman, philanthropist and public servant.
Scarlett Curtis: writer and activist.
Melanie Eusebe: co-founder of the Black British Business Awards.
Viv Groskop: author and comedian.
Paula Hawkins: international bestselling author. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=21&v=qNRN7PE603c&feature=emb_logo -
2020 Women's Prize for Fiction Winner Announced
The 25th anniversary judges will announce the winner of the 2020 Women's Prize for Fiction Award.
