REWARDING WOMEN WRITERS

Kate Mosse is the founder director of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, now 25 years old.

‘There was a Booker shortlist in 1991 with no women on it,’ she says. ‘If it had been an all-female list all hell would have broken loose. So a group of us got together and discovered 60% of novels published were by women but 9% were shortlisted. Literature is seen as white male narratives. Literary prizes are a way that readers hear about exceptional books. So prizes matter.’

The Women’s Prize first ran as the Orange Prize for Fiction in 1996. ‘We believed absolutely in this prize,’ says Kate. ‘And the rest is history. It’s transformed the landscape. It means being a woman who writes, and who reads, is always represented. Every year it makes sure that we’re celebrating and admiring exceptional books.’

The context in which the prize is awarded has changed. ‘There is still enormous discrimination against women, an unequal pay gap. A lack of representation for women’s voices,’ says Kate. ‘So there’s been a new wave of feminism, much more inclusive and the prize equals attention in the real world. The internet means there’s more women writing in English even if it isn’t their heritage language. There’s a lot of ambition – pretty big books, women writing big stories about the world as well as exquisite domestic stories. A wide range of women’s voices and experiences. I love the sisterhood of the Women’s Prize. It’s always been about women supporting other women – celebrating the ones who have gone before and the ones coming up.’

In partnership with Curtis Brown Literary Agency and Curtis Brown Creative, the Women’s Prize Trust runs Discoveries, an initiative to find and support new voices in women’s creative writing in the UK and Ireland.

‘The founding principles of the prize was always to use the attention the prize got to support a range of projects,’ says Kate. ‘It’s about reaching out, not just to women signed up to creative writing courses, but very much thinking let’s look outside to communities that are often outside the mainstream or don’t feel welcome. Passion for writing, that’s what matters. We want to support new writing, at whatever age. I’m just as interested a woman coming to writing at the age of sixty or seventy, as younger writers. They get development meetings, activities trying to demystify the process of publishing, so the women will be given active mentoring and support. You need, when you’re starting out, people in the know to share their advice. It will be very pleasurable to see what’s coming through.’

The longlist for the Discoveries 2020-21 will be announced this spring. The shortlist for the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction will be announced at the end of April.

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• Nineteen-year old Australian tennis player Evonne Goolagong won Wimbledon

• Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was born

in Australia

• Doors singer Jim Morrison was found dead in a

bathtub in Paris