The Women’s Prize for Fiction is a hugely well-regarded prize, known for promoting and celebrating the very best of women’s writing. Launched in 1996, it’s sole focus for the last 25 years has been fiction but following some research which showed a clear inequality between the treatment of men and women’s non-fiction, the charity made the decision that a non-fiction prize was equally needed.
The inaugural Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction longlist contained a real breadth of styles, including personal memoir, investigative journalism and innovative history books. The books come from a real range of disciplines, from neuroscience to economics and politics to art.
That longlist has now been narrowed down to a list of six books, chosen by a panel of five judges, which was chaired by Professor Suzannah Lipscomb, and included fair fashion campaigner Venetia La Manna; academic, author and consultant Professor Nicola Rollock; biographer and journalist Anne Sebba; and author and 2018 winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction Kamila Shamsie.
“Our magnificent shortlist is made up of six
powerful, impressive books that are characterised by the brilliance and beauty of their writing and which each offer a unique, original perspective. The readers of these books will never see the world – be it through art, history, landscape, politics, religion or technology – the same again.”
The Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction 2024
*All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake by Tiya Miles
*Thunderclap: A Memoir of Art and Life and Sudden Death by Laura Cumming
*A Flat Place by Noreen Masud
*Code-Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI by Madhumita Murgia
*Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein
*How To Say Babylon: A Jamaican Memoir by Safiya Sinclair
The Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction winner will be named on Thursday 13 June 2024 and will receive a cheque for £30,000 and a limited-edition artwork known as the ‘Charlotte’, both gifted by the Charlotte Aitken Trust.
