Keyes claims comic literary prize is sexist
MARIAN KEYES has accused the judges of a leading comic fiction prize of sexism after repeatedly failing to be shortlisted. The author claimed women writers were being unfairly overlooked and asked: “What else do I have to do to qualify?”
Keyes, whose books have sold in their millions, said she had a bone to pick with the judges of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize. The prize was cancelled this year after the organisers concluded that they had not read anything sufficiently amusing.
In the past 18 years, there have been three female winners. Keyes said: “I have never been shortlisted. Say what you like about me, my books are funny, they are comic. What else do I have to do to qualify?”
However, it appears that Keyes’s own publishers did not submit her most recent novel, The Break, for consideration. The Irish author was speaking at the Hay Festival in a discussion recorded for the BBC’S Talking Books programme.
Peter Florence, the festival director, is one of the prize judges and said Keyes’s novels had not been submitted for the past two years.
He insisted that the judges “do not play the representation game” and the funniest book wins regardless of the author’s gender.
Asked why most of the prize’s winners have been men, Keyes replied: “Because they’re men. Because male voices are automatically given extra weight.
“I mean, anything that’s ever been said or done by a woman just matters less.”
♦ Mark Billingham, the crime writer, has criticised the Staunch Book Prize, a literary award for novels that do not include violent abuse of women, as preposterous” and “hugely insulting”.
He told The Mail on Sunday: “It’s hugely insulting to a swathe of crime writers, often women, who are writing about violence, and often violence against women. You can’t explore that issue without dealing with it.”