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Women's Prize for Fiction
Awarded for	Best full-length novel written in English by a woman of any nationality and published in UK
Sponsored by	Family of sponsors (2018–) Baileys (2014–2017) Private benefactors (2013) Orange (1996–2012)
Location	United Kingdom
Presented by	Women's Prize for Fiction
First awarded	1996
Website	www.womensprizeforfiction.co.uk

The Women's Prize for Fiction (previously called Orange Prize for Fiction (1996–2006 & 2009–12), Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction (2007–2008) and Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction (2014–2017)) is one of the United Kingdom's most prestigious literary prizes, annually awarded to a female author of any nationality for the best original full-length novel written in English, and published in the United Kingdom in the preceding year. The prize was originally due to be launched in 1994 with the support of Mitsubishi but public controversy over the merits of the award caused the sponsorship to be withdrawn. Funding from Orange, a UK mobile network operator and Internet service provider, allowed the prize to be launched in 1996 by a committee of male and female "journalists, reviewers, agents, publishers, librarians, booksellers", including current Honorary Director Kate Mosse.

In May 2012, it was announced that Orange would be ending its sponsorship of the prize. In 2012, the award was formally known as the "Women's Prize for Fiction", and was sponsored by "private benefactors" led by Cherie Blair and writers Joanna Trollope and Elizabeth Buchan. In 2013, the new sponsor became Baileys. In January 2017 the company announced that it was the last year that they would sponsor the prize. In June 2017, the prize announced it would change its name to simply "Women's Prize for Fiction" starting in 2018, and will be supported by a family of sponsors.

The prize was established to recognise the contribution of female writers, whom Mosse believed were often overlooked in other major literary awards, and in reaction to the all-male shortlist for the 1991 Booker Prize. The winner of the prize receives £30,000, along with a bronze sculpture called the Bessie created by artist Grizel Niven, the sister of actor and writer David Niven. Typically, a longlist of nominees is announced around March each year, followed by a shortlist in June; within days the winner is announced. The winner is selected by a board of "five leading women" each year. In 2005, judges named Andrea Levy's Small Island as the "Orange of Oranges", the best novel of the preceding decade.

The BBC suggests that the prize forms part of the "trinity" of UK literary prizes, along with the Booker Prize and the Costa Book Awards; the sales of works by the nominees of these awards are significantly boosted. Levy's 2004 winning book sold almost one million copies (in comparison to less than 600,000 for the Booker Prize winner of the same year), while sales of Helen Dunmore's A Spell of Winter quadrupled after being awarded the inaugural prize. Valerie Martin's 2003 award saw her novel sales increase tenfold after the award, and British libraries, who often support the prize with various promotions, reported success in introducing people to new authors: "48% said that they had tried new writers as a result of the promotion, and 42% said that they would try other books by the new authors they had read."

However, the fact that the prize singles out female writers is not without controversy. After the prize was founded, Auberon Waugh nicknamed it the "Lemon Prize" while Germaine Greer claimed there would soon be a prize for "writers with red hair". Winner of the 1990 Booker Prize, A. S. Byatt, called it a "sexist prize", claiming "such a prize was never needed." In 1999, the chairwoman of the judges, Lola Young, said that the British fiction they were asked to appraise fell into two categories, either "insular and parochial" or "domestic in a piddling kind of way", unlike American authors who "take small, intimate stories and set them against this vast physical and cultural landscape which is very appealing." Linda Grant suffered accusations of plagiarism following her award in 2000, while the following year, a panel of male critics produced their own shortlist and heavily criticised the genuine shortlist. Though full of praise for the winner of the 2007 prize, the chair of the judging panel Muriel Gray decried the fact that the shortlist had to be whittled down from "a lot of dross", while former editor of The Times Simon Jenkins called it "sexist". In 2008, writer Tim Lott called the award "a sexist con-trick" and said, "the Orange Prize is sexist and discriminatory, and it should be shunned".

Barbara Kingsolver is the only author to have won the prize twice, doing so in 2010 for The Lacuna and in 2023 for Demon Copperhead. Margaret Atwood has been nominated three times without a win. Hilary Mantel was shortlisted three times without winning, for Beyond Black (2005) and the first two novels in her Tudor trilogy, Wolf Hall (2009) and Bring Up The Bodies (2012), which both won the Booker Prize. The third book in the trilogy, The Mirror & the Light, was shortlisted in April 2020, a year in which the award (usually given in May) was postponed to September. Since the inaugural award to Helen Dunmore, British writers have won five times, while North American authors have secured the prize ten times.

Recipients

1990s

2000s

2010s

2020s

Notes

1. Anne Michaels was the first non-British winner
2. Small Island was also the Whitbread Book of the Year. In 2005, the book received the "Orange of Oranges" award.
3. In 2015, Half of a Yellow Sun received the "Baileys of Baileys" award.
4. The Tiger's Wife is Obreht's debut novel. At age 25 (at the time of the award), she was the youngest author to win to date.
5. The Song of Achilles is Miller's debut novel.
6. The Glorious Heresies is McInerney's debut novel.
7. River East, River West is Aube Rey Lescure's debut novel.

See also

• Orange Award for New Writers
• List of British literary awards
• List of years in literature

References

• "Orange Prize for Fiction – Archive". Orange. Archived from the original on 11 January 2012. Retrieved 1 December 2011.
• "Orange prize for fiction". The Guardian. London. 10 February 2008. Retrieved 30 November 2011.

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69. ^ "Revealing the 2019 Women's Prize for Fiction Shortlist". Women's Prize for Fiction. 28 April 2019. Retrieved 30 April 2019.
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74. Shaffi, Sarah (15 June 2022). "Ruth Ozeki's 'complete joy' of a novel wins Women's prize for fiction". The Guardian. Retrieved 16 June 2022.
75. ^ "'Sorrow and Bliss' shortlisted for 2022 Women's Prize". Books+Publishing. 28 April 2022. Retrieved 28 April 2022.
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79. Creamer, Ella (24 April 2024). "Anne Enright, Kate Grenville and Isabella Hammad shortlisted for Women's prize for fiction". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 24 April 2024.
80. ^ Ali, Monica (24 April 2024). "'Six spellbinding and thought-provoking novels': why we chose the Women's prize for fiction shortlist". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 24 April 2024.

External links

• Women's Prize for Fiction, official website
• Shortlisted works for the Orange Prize at LibraryThing

• Lists of books
• Women's Prize for Fiction–winning works
• Women-related lists
• Women's Prize for Fiction