Ali Smith wins Baileys prize with How to Be Both

Women’s prize for fiction chair of judges Shami Chakrabarti says ‘this is not a good book, this is a great book’

‘She is a literary genius’ ... Ali Smith. Photograph: Antonio Zazueta Olmos for the Guardian

Alison Flood

Wednesday 3 June 2015 

Weaving together the stories of a teenage girl in modern-day Cambridge and a 15th-century Italian artist, Ali Smith’s How to Be Both has won the Baileys women’s prize for fiction, with chair of judges Shami Chakrabarti describing it as a work that will still be read in 100 years.

Already the winner of prizes including the Costa novel award and the Goldsmiths, and shortlisted for the Man Booker, Smith’s novel beat a strong shortlist to win the £30,000 award on Wednesday evening. Intended to celebrate “excellence, originality and accessibility in women’s writing from throughout the world”, the Baileys prize, formerly known as the Orange, has been won in the past by Lionel Shriver for We Need to Talk About Kevin, and Zadie Smith for On Beauty.

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