The Liberty director, who is chair of this year’s judges, says we are “still nowhere near where we should be” when it comes to literary recognition for women
The women’s prize for fiction, established to redress the tendency by literary awards to overlook writing by women, is now in its 20th year, but chair of this year’s judges Shami Chakrabarti believes we are “still nowhere near where we should be” when it comes to literary recognition for women.
Announcing a longlist of 20 titles for the Baileys women’s prize for fiction, which runs the gamut from literary works by the likes of Ali Smith, Anne Tyler, Kamila Shamsie, Sarah Waters and Rachel Cusk to dystopian science fiction and thrillers, the Liberty director was adamant that there is still a place for a literary award focusing on women’s fiction.
Gender injustice, said the campaigner, is “the greatest human rights violation in the world ... like an apartheid. It’s global in reach and millennial in duration. It’s certainly not a time to be doing anything less.”
The women’s prize for fiction was launched in the wake of the judges’ failure to shortlist a single female author for the Booker prize of 1991. Literary figures led by the author Kate Mosse discovered that “by 1992, only 10% of novelists shortlisted for the Booker prize had been women”; by 1996, their plan to launch an award solely for women had come to fruition. After years of sponsorship by Orange, the 2013 award was privately funded by sponsors including Cherie Blair and Joanna Trollope. The prize is now sponsored by Baileys.
More, plus list
Announcing a longlist of 20 titles for the Baileys women’s prize for fiction, which runs the gamut from literary works by the likes of Ali Smith, Anne Tyler, Kamila Shamsie, Sarah Waters and Rachel Cusk to dystopian science fiction and thrillers, the Liberty director was adamant that there is still a place for a literary award focusing on women’s fiction.
Gender injustice, said the campaigner, is “the greatest human rights violation in the world ... like an apartheid. It’s global in reach and millennial in duration. It’s certainly not a time to be doing anything less.”
The women’s prize for fiction was launched in the wake of the judges’ failure to shortlist a single female author for the Booker prize of 1991. Literary figures led by the author Kate Mosse discovered that “by 1992, only 10% of novelists shortlisted for the Booker prize had been women”; by 1996, their plan to launch an award solely for women had come to fruition. After years of sponsorship by Orange, the 2013 award was privately funded by sponsors including Cherie Blair and Joanna Trollope. The prize is now sponsored by Baileys.
More, plus list
No comments:
Post a Comment