Trans author is nominated for women’s fiction prize

A LEADING women’s fiction prize has made history by including a trans woman in its 2021 longlist.

Torrey Peters, pictured, has been listed for her debut novel Detransition, Baby.

It comes months after organisers of the Women’s Prize For Fiction faced criticism for saying that entries would be accepted from anyone ‘legally defined’ as a woman.

Detransition, Baby follows trans women Reese and Amy as they attempt to navigate forming an unconventional family when Amy de-transitions to become Ames and fathers a child from an affair with his boss Katrina.

In October, organisers of the prestigious award were accused of putting women’s rights last as they extended the award to ‘all women’.

Joanna Prior, chairman of the award’s board, said: ‘In our terms and conditions, the word “woman” equates to a cis woman, a transgender woman or anyone who is legally defined as a woman or of the female sex.’

A trans woman is a woman who was assigned male at birth, while cis or cisgender is a term for those whose gender identity matches their sex assigned at birth.

Miss Peters’ novel, which has been picked up for a TV adaptation, is one of six debuts on this year’s longlist including Irish novelist Naoise Dolan’s Exciting Times, Booker Prize nominated American Avni Doshi’s Burnt Sugar and Barbadian author Cherie Jones’ How The OneArmed Sister Sweeps Her House.

Comedian Dawn French’s fourth novel Because Of You is listed alongside previous winner, Ali Smith. Other novels include Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half, Clare Chambers’ Small Pleasures, and Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi.

Chairman of the judges Bernardine Evaristo, the Booker Prize-winning novelist, said she is ‘confident we have chosen 16 standout novels that represent a truly wide and varied range of fiction’.

Winners receive £30,000 and a bronze sculpture called the Bessie.