Image: Woman’s Prize Trust
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
‘A Revelation and a Joy’
As Publishing Perspectives readers know, the United Kingdom’s Women’s Prize Trust, which operates the Women’s Prize for Fiction announced a year ago that it would create a second honor, one for nonfiction by women authors.
This evening in London (February 15), the program has announced a large inaugural slate of longlisted works for the Women’s Prize for Nonfiction: 16 titles published between 1 April 2023 and 31 March 2024.
The longlisted titles come from writers in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, India, Jamaica, and the Philippines. Those authors include nine writers’ first publications “for a general, non-academic readership.” In addition, there are five journalists with work represented on the list.
The ultimate winner of this new accolade is to receive a purse of £30,000 (US$37,742) and a copy of The Charlotte, a sculptural figure by Ann Christopher. The Charlotte Aitken Trust is the sponsor making both the cash and the figurine available. Additional sponsorship this year comes from FindMyPast, a genealogy program based in the UK, and what the program describes as “a one-off anonymous donation.”
Books eligible for this year’s prize must be the work of a single author and be published in the United Kingdom between April 1, 2023, and March 31.
Jurors are to produce a six-title shortlist for an announcement on March 27. The winner is to be named on June 13. Among the authors longlisted here, the American MacArthur fellow Tiya Miles at Harvard may be among the most honored in recent years. She won the 2021 National Book Award in nonfiction for All That She Carried, and won Canada’s 2022 US$75,000 Cundill History Prize for that title, as well. It was also longlisted for the 2023 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction.
Women’s Prize for Nonfiction, 2024 Longlist
| Author | Title | Publisher | Author Nationality |
| Alice Albinia | The Britannias: An Island Quest | Penguin Random House / Allen Lane | British |
| Grace Blakeley | Vulture Capitalism: Corporate Crimes, Backdoor Bailouts, and the Death of Freedom | Bloomsbury Publishing | British |
| Cat Bohannon | Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution | Penguin Random House / Hutchinson Heinemann | American |
| Marianne Brooker | Intervals | Fitzcarraldo Editions | British |
| Joya Chatterji | Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century | Penguin Random House / The Bodley Head | Indian |
| Laura Cumming | Thunderclap: A Memoir of Art and Life and Sudden Death | Penguin Random House / Chatto & Windus | British |
| Patricia Evangelista | Some People Need Killing: A Memoir of Murder in the Philippines | Grove Press | Filipino |
| Anna Funder | Wifedom: Mrs. Orwell’s Invisible Life | Penguin Random House / Viking | Australian |
| Lucy Jones | Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Motherhood | Penguin Random House / Allen Lane | British |
| Naomi Klein | Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World | Penguin Random House / Allen Lane | Canadian |
| Noreen Masud | A Flat Place | Penguin Random House / Hamilton Hamish | British |
| Tiya Miles | All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake | Profile Books | American |
| Madhumita Murgia | Code-Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI | Pan Macmillan / Picador | British |
| Sarah Ogilvie | The Dictionary People: The Unsung Heroes Who Created the Oxford English Dictionary | Penguin Random House / Chatto & Windus | American and Italian |
| Leah Redmond Chang | Young Queens: The Intertwined Lives of Catherine de’ Medici, Elisabeth de Valois, and Mary, Queen of Scots | Bloomsbury Publishing / Bloomsbury Circus | American |
| Safiya Sinclair | How To Say Babylon: A Jamaican Memoir | HarperCollins / 4th Estate | Jamaican |
Jurors for the First Nonfiction Prize
The 2024 jury for the Women’s Prize for Nonfiction. From left are Anna Sebba; Nicola Rollock; Suzannah Lipscomb; Kamila Shamsie; and Venetia La Manna. Image: Women’s Prize Trust
The jury for this first year of the Women’s Prize for Nonfiction comprises:
- Suzannah Lipscomb (jury chair)
- Venetia La Manna
- Nicola Rollock
- Anne Sebba
- Kamila Shamsie
In a comment on the longlist, the jury chair, Lipscomb, is quoted, saying, “Reading for the Women’s Prize for Nonfiction has been a revelation and a joy. I’m very proud to introduce the sensational books that make up the inaugural longlist.
“Our selection represents the breadth of women’s nonfiction writing: science, history, memoir, technology, literary biography, health, linguistics, investigative journalism, art history, activism, travel-writing and economics. And each author has created a masterpiece worthy of your attention. Buy them, borrow them – above all read them – and in so doing you’ll be elevating women’s voices and female perspectives in a whole range of disciplines and on a whole host of topics.”
The executive director of the Women’s Prize Trust is Claire Shanahan, and Anna Rafferty is chair of the board. Kate Mosse is the founding director of both this prize and the Women’s Prize for Fiction.
More from Publishing Perspectives on international book and publishing awards programs is here. More from us on the Women’s Prize for Fiction is here, more on the United Kingdom’s book and publishing market is here, and more on nonfiction is here.
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