Speaking about the partnership, Tamsin Todd, Findmypast CEO, said: “The Women’s Prize for Fiction has been a force for change, and we’re thrilled to play a part in launching the new non-fiction prize, which promises to be equally transformational. Illuminating under-represented stories is a passion for Findmypast, and as the exclusive publisher of some of the world’s largest historical data sets, such as the 1921 Census of England and Wales and the British Newspaper Archive, we are able to bring the experience of women through history into sight.”
Kate Mosse, writer and Founder Director of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, added: “We were blown away by the support and enthusiasm for the idea of this new prize in February, and it has long been a goal of the Women’s Prize Trust to make a contribution to promoting, publicising and championing exceptional narrative non-fiction writing by women in English throughout the world and to make sure that wonderful, powerful works of non-fiction by women are given the attention they deserve.”
As with the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the new annual non-fiction prize will be open to all female writers from across the globe who are published in the UK and writing in English. The Prize will celebrate excellence in writing, robust research, original narrative voices and accessibility. The criteria will include all narrative non-fiction–from science, smart-thinking, politics, biography and history, to memoir, sport, music, nature writing, faith and philosophy–and celebrate books written by a single author. The prize will open for submissions via publishers later in summer 2023, with more information and Terms and Conditions of entry to be shared in due course.
