Evans & Doucet win Women’s fiction, nonfiction prizes
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- Virginia Evans won the Women’s prize for fiction for her debut novel The Correspondent, receiving £30,000 at a ceremony in central London on Thursday evening.
- Lyse Doucet secured the Women’s prize for nonfiction with her debut The Finest Hotel in Kabul, also awarded £30,000 at the same event.
- Julia Gillard, chair of the fiction judging panel, praised The Correspondent as a “remarkable novel” that combines originality, excellence and accessibility, noting it captured the judges’ hearts.
- Thangam Debbonaire, chair of the nonfiction judging panel, described The Finest Hotel in Kabul as a “perfect work of narrative nonfiction” that is cleverly constructed, brilliantly researched, and emotionally moving.
- Women’s prize for nonfiction was launched in 2023 after research revealed only 35.5% of winners across seven major UK nonfiction awards in the previous decade were women, highlighting a gender gap the prize aims to address.
Why it matters: The awards provide each debut author with a £30,000 boost, enabling further creative work, while the nonfiction prize’s creation directly tackles the under‑representation of women—only 35.5% of past winners—shifting the literary landscape toward greater gender parity and signaling industry commitment to equity.
