2 w. ago The Guardian view on the Women’s prize for nonfiction: shining a light where it’s badly needed | Editorial

Having a separate award was good for female novelists. Now a medical author is blazing a trail with a true storyFemale 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 cri...

Politics

3 w. ago Women’s prize winner Yael van der Wouden: ‘It’s heartbreaking to see so much hatred towards queer people’

The winner of this year’s fiction prize on growing up as an outsider, why we’re all guilty of complicity, and using her acceptance speech to reveal that she is intersexIt 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. Continue reading...

Events

3 w. ago 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

Politics

3 w. ago The Women’s Prize for Fiction 2025 has gone to a debut author – here’s where to read the winning book

The winning novel is “a classic in the making”

Culture

3 w. ago Women’s Prize for Fiction ‘greatest honour’ as an intersex woman, says winner

Dutch author Yael Van der Wouden will receive £30,000 and a bronze statuette.

Politics

3 w. ago Yael van der Wouden and Rachel Clarke win Women's Prize book awards

Dutch writer Yael van der Wouden won the Women’s Prize for Fiction on Thursday for her debut novel “The Safekeep.”

Events

3 w. ago Debut novel by Dutch author wins 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction

Yael van der Wouden won the award for her novel, The Safekeep, which explores repressed desire and the unresolved aftermath of the Holocaust.

Culture

3 w. ago Queen Camilla praises literary prize for championing women authors for 30th anniversary

Queen Camilla made a surprise appearance at an open-air event to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Women's Prize for Fiction in London where she hailed the competition for helping female writers

Politics

3 w. ago Brotherless Night by VV Ganeshananthan audiobook review – love and conflict in Sri Lanka

The civil war transforms a young trainee doctor’s life as she copes with her feelings for a Tamil Tiger in last year’s Women’s prizewinning novelBrotherless Night opens with 16-year-old Sashi Kulenthiren, who hopes to be a doctor like her eldest brother, making tea when the kettle slips out of her hand, causing her to pour boiling water on herself. When a neighbour, K, hears her screams, he rushes over to help, cracking raw eggs over the scalds to soothe the pain. “So I began as K’s patient though he ended as mine,” Sashi reflects.Set in 1980s Sri Lanka, VV Ganeshananthan’s coming-of-age novel – which won the 2024 Women’s prize for fiction – is an epic and hard-hitting tale of family and survival as it documents life during the civil war between Tamil separatists and the Sinhalese majority that lasted three decades. Before fighting breaks out, Sashi’s most pressing problem is whether she will pass her exams at school. But soon violence and kidnapping become the norm, communities are...

Events

3 w. ago Queen Camilla makes surprise book awards appearance and reveals holiday reading list

Queen Camilla dropped into an event ahead of the 30th annual Women's Prize for Fiction awards, where she met authors as well as book lovers and let them know what she had been reading

Politics

3 w. ago Queen Camilla reveals holiday reading list as she makes surprise book awards appearance

Queen Camilla dropped into an event ahead of the 30th annual Women's Prize for Fiction awards, where she met authors as well as book lovers and let them know what she had been reading

Politics