The Folio Prize adds a new string to its bow

November 5, 2014 - Melville House

by Zeljka Marosevic

The Folio Society announced in 2013 that it would be launching a new literary prize, and one that would be open to all books written in English, whether or not the writers originated from England or the Commonwealth. At the time, the prize was seen as a rival to the Booker Prize, and the Booker’s administrators reacted promptly by controversially changing their own rules of entry to match those of the Folio.

George Saunders was the first winner of the Folio Prize earlier this year: an American short story writer, he went against every original Booker rule (not British, not a novel).
This year the Booker ended up with a generally haphazard and disappointing long list and shortlist, and finally awarded the prize to an uncontroversial Australian. It was a prize that was finding its feet again, after decades of dominating literary culture.

While comparisons of the two prizes are inevitable, it seems a new focus should be placed on the initiatives the Folio Society is launching around the prize itself. Last year, it held its first ever Folio Prize Fiction Festival, which hosted shortlisted authors as well as writers and authors from the Folio Prize Academy (a community of authors, writers and critics, out of which a judging panel for the prize is assembled each year) in a series of events and talks. It has now announced an annual Folio Society Lecture, and giving the inaugural address will be Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
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