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The Guardian
21 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Guardian view on the Women's prize for nonfiction: shining a light where it's badly needed
Female nonfiction writers are paid less on average, receive fewer reviews and win fewer prizes than men. Unsurprisingly, this means that women sell fewer books. So far this year, more than 60% of titles on the UK's hardback and paperback nonfiction bestseller lists have been by men. Kate Mosse wants to change this. Famously, she set up the Women's prize for fiction after there was not a single woman on the 1991 Booker shortlist. This year Ms Mosse's award celebrates its 30th anniversary. With previous winners including Zadie Smith, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Maggie O'Farrell, it has changed the publishing landscape to the extent that some suggest it is now redundant: last year, five out of the six books on the Booker prize shortlist were by women, and the winner was Samantha Harvey. Indeed, such is the pre-eminence of female novelists that there is talk of a crisis in men's fiction, and plans for an independent publisher, Conduit Books, especially for male authors. Nonfiction publishing, however, is a strikingly different story. Hence Ms Mosse's latest project: the Women's prize for nonfiction, which aims to do for female authors of serious narrative nonfiction what has already been achieved with fiction. Last year, Naomi Klein's quasi-memoir Doppelganger, about conspiracy theories and truth in politics, was the award's first winner. Last week, The Story of a Heart, by the doctor and writer Rachel Clarke, became the second, with her moving interweaving of the story of two children connected by a heart transplant with the history of heart surgery. Nonfiction books by women are not the only ones in need of help. With a few notable exceptions (including Prince Harry's memoir Spare and James Clear's self-help bestseller Atomic Habits), the overall picture for nonfiction publishing is bleak: last year, specialist and trade nonfiction combined had their lowest sales, in money terms, since 2015. In another blow for the publishing industry, last week a National Literacy Trust report revealed that reading for enjoyment among children and young people in the UK is at its lowest level in two decades. Only a quarter of teenage boys said they read books in their free time. One understandable response to figures like these is to emphasise the value of reading per se. But who and what we read matters as well as whether we do it. Part of the imbalance in nonfiction has been a historical perception of male expertise, particularly on certain topics. As with bias in class and race, publishing has been slow to address this proactively. In her 2021 book, The Authority Gap, examining why women are still taken less seriously than men, Mary Ann Sieghart stresses the importance of encouraging boys to read books about girls, and for men to seek out women's voices. There have been many efforts to address such discrimination constructively. Women Also Know Stuff, for example, is a database of experts created with the aim of increasing female representation. 'Most women fight wars on two fronts,' Rebecca Solnit wrote in her essay Men Explain Things to Me. 'One for whatever the putative topic is and one simply for the right to speak, to have ideas, to be acknowledged to be in possession of facts and truths, to have value.' For the help it offers to female authors fighting such battles, as well as the attention it brings to new books, the Women's prize for nonfiction should be welcomed.
The Independent
04-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Bernardine Evaristo receives Women's Prize outstanding contribution award
Award-winning novelist Bernardine Evaristo has been announced as the recipient of an outstanding contribution award from the Women's Prize Trust. The one-off literary honour celebrates Evaristo's body of work and dedication to advancing the voices of people from underrepresented backgrounds. The trust is known for the Women's Prize for Fiction, a popular literary award that was established in 1996. Evaristo, 66, who was joint winner of the Booker Prize in 2019 for her novel Girl, Woman, Other, will be presented with the award and £100,000 prize money on June 12 at the Women's Prize Trust's summer party in London. She said: 'I am completely overwhelmed and overjoyed to receive this unique award. 'I feel such deep gratitude towards the Women's Prize for honouring me in this way. 'Over the last three decades I have witnessed with great admiration and respect how the Women's Prize for Fiction has so bravely and brilliantly championed and developed women's writing, always from an inclusive stance. 'The financial reward comes as an unexpected blessing in my life and, given the mission of the Women's Prize Trust, it seems fitting that I spend this substantial sum supporting other women writers; more details on this will be forthcoming.' Evaristo will be honoured alongside the winners of the 2025 Women's Prize for Fiction and the Women's Prize for Non-Fiction, which was won by V V Ganeshananthan and Naomi Klein respectively, last year. Authors who have been longlisted or won the Women's Prize for Fiction over the past three decades, and had published a minimum of five books, were eligible for the outstanding contribution award. The winner of the outstanding contribution award was selected by a judging panel chaired by novelist and non-fiction author Kate Mosse, founder director of the Women's Prize for Fiction and Women's Prize for Non-Fiction. She said: 'My fellow judges and I always knew it would be a tall order to choose just one author from the many exceptional contemporary writers who have made such a huge contribution in a world where women's voices are increasingly being silenced, where the arts and artists are under attack. 'Books encourage empathy, they offer alternative and diverse points of view; they help us to stand in other people's shoes and to see our own worlds in the mirror. 'In the end, we felt that Bernardine Evaristo's beautiful, ambitious and inventive body of work (which includes plays, poetry, essays, monologues and memoir as well as award-winning fiction), her dazzling skill and imagination, and her courage to take risks and offer readers a pathway into diverse and multifarious worlds over a forty-year career, made her the ideal recipient of the Women's Prize Outstanding Contribution Award.' The Women's Prize Trust says the one-off award marks the 30th anniversary year of the Women's Prize for Fiction. Evaristo, who was born in Woolwich, south London, and is of Anglo-Nigerian descent, has shed light on the lives of modern British women through her work, taking an interest in the African diaspora. She has launched several successful writing schemes to support women writers and under-represented writers of colour, including the Complete Works mentoring scheme for poets. Several of her works, including The Emperor's Babe and Hello Mum, have been adapted into BBC Radio 4 plays. Evaristo's other novels include Blonde Roots, Soul Tourists and Mr Loverman. The latter was turned into an eight-part BBC drama starring Lennie James and Ariyon Bakare. The actors, who star as lovers struggling to go public with their relationship, picked up Baftas for their roles during the academy's TV awards in May.
