Women's Prize for Nonfiction 2025 longlist is here – and British authors dominate the selection
The Women's Prize for Nonfiction 2025 longlist has been announced and includes works by music icon Neneh Cherry, newly elected Member of Parliament Yuan Yang and Pulitzer Prize winner Anne Applebaum.
Awarded for excellence, originality and accessibility in narrative non-fiction, the Women's Prize for Nonfiction runs as a sister prize to the globally recognised Women's Prize for Fiction, which this year celebrates its 30th anniversary.
The panel of five judges – Kavita Puri, Dr Leah Broad, Elizabeth Buchan, Dr Elizabeth-Jane Burnett, Emma Gannon – will whittle the lineup down to a shortlist of six, which will be announced on Wednesday, 26 March.
This year's longlist includes writing drawn from a range of disciplines, from geo-politics, art, music, natural history and true crime, to law, science, medicine and history.
British writers dominate the 2025 longlist, with 11 of the 16 authors from the UK. Those selected include a mixture of new and well-established writers and features six dazzling nonfiction debuts.
The Women's Prize for Nonfiction 2025 longlist is as follows:
Anne Applebaum Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World
Eleanor Barraclough Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age
Helen Castor The Eagle and the Hart: The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV
Neneh Cherry A Thousand Threads
Rachel Clarke The Story of A Heart
Chloe Dalton Raising Hare
Jenni Fagan Ootlin
Lulu Miller Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love and the Hidden Order of Life
Clare Mulley Agent Zo: The Untold Stories of Fearless WW2 Resistance Fighter Elżbieta Zawacka
Rebecca Nagle By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land
Sue Prideaux Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin
Helen Scales What the Wild Sea Can Be: The Future of the World's Ocean
Kate Summerscale The Peepshow: The Murders at 10 Rillington Place
Harriet Wistrich Sister in Law: Fighting for Justice in a System Designed by Men
Alexis Wright Tracker
Yuan Yang Private Revolutions: Coming of Age in a New China
The inaugural Women's Prize for Non-Fiction in 2024 was won by Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein.
Klein's winning book investigates the world of 'conspiracy theories, anti-vaxxers and demagogue hucksters', with the author critiquing president Donald Trump on the night of her victory.
In a similar vein, Puri, chairwoman of the Women's Prize for Non-Fiction judges said of this year's list: 'Here are books that provoke debate and discussion, that offer insight into new experiences and perspectives, and that bring overlooked stories back to life and recognition.
'Amongst this stellar list, there are also reads that expertly steer us through the most pressing issues of our time, show the resilience of the human spirit, alongside others that elucidate the dangers of unchecked power, the consequence of oppression and the need for action and defiance.'
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The Guardian
10 hours ago
- The Guardian
Women's prize winner Yael van der Wouden: ‘It's heartbreaking to see so much hatred towards queer people'
It has been a dramatic couple of years for 37-year-old Dutch author Yael van der Wouden: her first novel, The Safekeep, a love story that deals with the legacy of the Holocaust in the Netherlands, was the focus of a frenzied bidding war and shortlisted for the 2024 Booker prize. Last night it won the Women's prize for fiction. 'I wrote this book from a place of hopelessness,' she says when we meet. 'I was looking for a ray of sunshine.' This morning in London the sun is blazing. She could never have expected that her novel would see off shortlisted authors including Miranda July (of whose work she is a big fan) and Elizabeth Strout. Warm and open, the author is shorter than I expected. Coming as she does from a country of tall people, as she jokes: 'I have tall energy.' She has great energy, despite several glasses of champagne last night and only a few hours' sleep. On her shoulder is a tattoo of a hare – an important symbol in the novel – which she had done after completing the book. In her tearful acceptance speech, Van der Wouden told the audience that when she hit puberty: 'all at once, my girlhood became an uncertain fact.' The fact that she is hormonally intersex 'was a huge part of my 20s, and then I got the healthcare that I needed … I am receiving truly the greatest honour of my life as a woman, presenting to you as a woman and accepting this Women's prize and that is because of every single trans person who's fought for healthcare, who changed the system, the law, societal standards, themselves. I stand on their shoulders.' It was the first time she has spoken about it publicly. Not to have done so she tells me, 'wouldn't have been me. I had my five minutes on stage and I figured what better moment to share something that I care about? It's heartbreaking to see so much hatred toward trans identities, queer identities.' Set in the Netherlands in 1961, The Safekeep is a tense psychological thriller and tender love story between two very different women, Isabel and Eva. It is a story of dispossession and self-discovery, national and intimate secrets and shame. 'This is a novel about a woman who is obsessed with a house, and then a stranger comes and upends her life,' the author says. Isabel is gentile, Eva is Jewish. To say much more would be to give away clues in a narrative that unfolds in a series of jagged revelations, like the shards of broken china Isabel cherishes, that come together to make a devastating and beautiful whole. The idea for the novel came to her 'as a parting gift' in a car on the way to one of the funerals of her Dutch grandparents, who died within days of each other in 2021. 'It came from a place of trying to escape grief,' she says. 'I was trying to find distraction in my own head, as I've done since I was a kid.' Born in Israel in 1987 to a Jewish mother of Romanian and Bulgarian heritage and a Dutch father, Van der Wouden, who describes herself as a 'Dutch-Israeli mixed-bag-diaspora child', spent her first 10 years in Ramat Gan, a city just east of Tel Aviv. She is careful not to talk about her childhood through what she calls 'a pink cloud' of nostalgia because of her vehement opposition to the Israel-Gaza war – she would like to see 'a ceasefire with immediate aid'. Both her parents were animators (her father created an Israeli version of Sesame Street) and while she and her two younger sisters were encouraged to engage with all art forms, she was not at all bookish. It wasn't until the family moved to the Netherlands when she was 10 that Van der Wouden discovered books – with Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden being a particular favourite. But she also discovered antisemitism, while living with her grandparents in a house in the forest. Though that home is still her 'happy place', going from cosmopolitan Tel Aviv to 'being the only Jew in the village' wasn't easy. To her new Dutch classmates she resembled Anne Frank. Now, she has no time for the rhetoric of tolerance. 'I think that's a terrible word, because tolerance is putting up with somebody. I want to be desired. I want to be loved. Rather than writing a story about tolerance, I wanted to write a story about love in the aftermath of war.' With Isabel, she created a character who goes from prejudice and repulsion to desire. There is a lot (an entire chapter) of sex in the novel. She laughs. 'My goal was to imbue the whole book with a sense of tension, and that tension is erotic.' Sign up to Bookmarks Discover new books and learn more about your favourite authors with our expert reviews, interviews and news stories. Literary delights delivered direct to you after newsletter promotion She deliberately chose the perspective of Isabel rather than Eva, so as not just to tell the victim's story. 'There's also many parts of perpetrator within me, within my history,' she says. Van der Wouden had never read a novel that explored what she calls 'the psyche of quiet complicity'. Through Isabel she wanted to show that 'complicity comes from small and uninteresting acts of dismissal', and it is something of which we are all guilty. 'It's part of the human experience. The question is, how do we deal with knowing that we looked away from something terrible, how do we then move forward?' The emotional power of the novel rests on the way in which Isabel reveals herself to be someone completely different, even to herself. 'What's like me,' Isabel says to her brother. 'There's no such thing. Like me.' This speaks to Van der Wouden's personal experience. 'We don't leave this life in the same bodies were born into, we are always under flux,' she says. 'This is not to say that gender and sexuality is a choice followed by change, but rather that change is an inherent part of life.' On the question of the supreme court ruling on gender rights, she adds: 'To subject that to law feels baffling to me, especially as it is accompanied by legal, verbal and physical violence.' Much of The Safekeep was written during lockdown in Utrecht, where she had an attic apartment overlooking the canal. 'A beautiful golden cage,' she says. She now lives half an hour away in Rotterdam, where she is thrilled to have a garden. She has already completed the first draft of a second novel set in a fishing village in the Netherlands in 1929. Her greatest hope for the novel as it goes on to find a bigger audience, 'if this isn't too saccharine,' she says apologetically, 'is, in fact, hope.'
Daily Mirror
14 hours ago
- Daily Mirror
Women's Prize for Fiction is 'greatest honour' as an intersex woman, says winner
The Women's Prize for Fiction 2025 went to Dutch author Yael van der Wouden for her debut novel, The Safekeep. The win, she says, is her "greatest honour" as an intersex woman Yael van der Wouden is the newly-crowned winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction and has called her triumph "the greatest honour of my life as a woman". Van der Wouden's win marks the 30th anniversary of the historic award which is organised by the Women's Prize Trust. As a registered charity, the Women's Prize Trust is dedicated to improving "access to and appreciation of women's writing" and uses their awards platform to champion brilliant women writers and role models. The Prize is awarded each year to the author of the best full-length novel of the year written in English and published in the UK. The winner receives £30,000, anonymously endowed, and the 'Bessie', a bronze statuette created by the artist Grizel Niven. Dutch author Yael van der Wouden won the prestigious prize this year for her debut novel, The Safekeep, which was also shortlisted for The Booker Prize in 2024. Described by the head of the judging panel as an "astonishing debut", her novel delves into themes of suppressed longing and the lasting effects of the Holocaust within the context of post-Second World War Netherlands. During the Women's Prize award ceremony, Van der Wouden took time in her victory speech to advocate for the trans community and detail her personal journey, saying: "I was a girl until I turned 13, and then, as I hit puberty, all that was supposed to happen did not quite happen. I won't thrill you too much with the specifics, but the long and the short of it is that, hormonally, I'm intersex. "This little fact defined my life throughout my teens, until I advocated for the health care that I needed. The surgery and the hormones that I needed, which not all intersex people need. Not all intersex people feel at odds with their gender presentation," she added. Help us improve our content by completing the survey below. We'd love to hear from you! Article continues below She noted: "I mention the fact that I did, because in the few precious moments here on stage, I am receiving, truly, the greatest honour of my life as a woman, presenting to you as a woman, and accepting this Women's Prize. And that is because of every single trans person who's fought for health care, who changed the system, the law, societal standards, themselves. I stand on their shoulders." The NHS website says intersex, or differences in sex development (DSD), is a group of rare conditions involving genes, hormones and reproductive organs that mean a person's sex development is different to most. Past Women's Prize Fiction winners include V. V. Ganeshananthan for Brotherless Night, Maggie O'Farrell for Hamnet and Tayari Jones for An American Marriage.
The Independent
17 hours ago
- The Independent
The Women's Prize for Fiction 2025 has gone to a debut author – here's where to read the winning book
The winner of the 2025 Women's Prize for Fiction has been announced. Triumphing over authors including Elizabeth Strout and Miranda July, debut novelist Yael van der Woude took home the prize for The Safekeep. Aiming to champion women authors and fresh voices, the prestigious literary award is now in its 30th year. The open-air ceremony was attended by Queen Camilla, who praised Kate Mosse and the other founders of the award. Camilla said, 'They believed that women's stories should be truly heard, understood and honoured; and that it was time to disprove Virginia Woolf's famous statement that 'Anon…was often a woman''. 'They did this by establishing the Women's Prize for Fiction and its instantly recognisable statuette, 'The Bessie'. This simple, but radical, step brought the female voice from the margins of the literary world to its very centre,' she said. According to the judges, each of the shortlisted books explored the need for personal freedom and human connection. They explore a range of topics, covering cultural heritage, friendship, and sexual awakenings. Woude's winning novel The Safekeep is a searing story of two women in the Netherlands after the Second World War. Chair of the fiction prize's judging panel, author Kit de Waal, said: 'The Safekeep is that rare thing: a masterful blend of history, suspense and historical authenticity … a classic in the making.' Above all, the shortlisted novels put a spotlight on the female experience, from 1960s Europe to present-day America. Here's everything you need to know about the winning book and the other novels in the running. Set in the Netherlands, The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden is a story of facing up to desire and the past. It follows Isabel, living as a recluse in her late mother's country home. Her solitary life of discipline and routine is threatened when her brother arranges for his new girlfriend to stay for the sweltering summer season. With just the two of them in the house, Isabel's need for control is tested, and the tension between the women builds to a crescendo. One of the buzziest debuts of the year – and a personal favourite – Nussaibah Younis's Fundamentally is an entertaining novel about a brutal subject. It follows Nadia, a young lecturer whose research into Isis brides leads to her running a deradicalisation program. Newly heartbroken, she is thrown into the chaotic world of international aid. Nadia soon forms a connection with east Londoner Sara, who joined Isis when she was just 15. Exploring faith and friendship, radicalism and racism, and decades of bureaucratic and systemic corruption and hypocrisy, Younis is funny, thoughtful, and sensitive about difficult topics. With signature wryness, the celebrated American writer and director Miranda July explores female reinvention, sexuality and menopause in All Fours. It follows a 45-year-old woman who sets out on a road trip from LA to New York but ends up in an unconsummated affair with a handsome man in a motel room close to home. Three weeks later, she's thrown back into her married, child-rearing life, but is this enough for her anymore? July breathes fresh life into a well-trodden theme - how creative and sexual freedom is at odds with the traditional trajectory of a woman's life. Her protagonist breaks free of convention to have her cake and eat it, too. Hilarious and profound, there's a reason why so many women love this novel. Another absorbing debut, The Persians tells the story of three generations of women in a once illustrious family in Iran. Spanning from the 1940s up to the present day, the narrative is shared between five women, beginning with Elizabeth. The elderly matriarch of the family during the 1979 revolution, Elizabeth decides to stay with her husband in Iran and sends her two daughters, Seem and Shirin, to America. Elizabeth's grandchildren are split up; one of them, Niaz, stays with her grandmother in Iran; the other, Bita, is a law student who feels generational guilt for the country her parents left behind. Drawing comparisons to Min Jin Lee's Pachinko, it's a powerful story of one family and their country. Elizabeth Strout has been longlisted four times and shortlisted twice for the Women's Prize for Fiction. Her latest recognition comes for Tell Me Everything, which sees two of her most famous characters meet - a delight for her fans. It's autumn in Maine, and long-time Crosby inhabitant Olive Kitteridge now resides at a retirement home in the coastal town. She is befriended by the acclaimed writer Lucy Barton, who lives in a house by the sea. Striking up a special bond, the two spend long afternoons telling each other stories of the people they have known and the places they've been. Quietly beautiful, the novel explores new friendships and old loves. Aria Aber's debut Good Girl follows Nila, a wild party-girl and aspiring artist growing up in Berlin. The daughter of Afghan doctors who fled their country before she was born, she is grieving the death of her mother and finding solace in the nightclubs of Berlin. A tumultuous romance with a charismatic American author offers escape from the pressure of being the Afghan ideal of a 'good girl.' Exploring politics, art, history and shame in her journey of self-discovery, it's won critical acclaim.
