Women's Prize for Fiction postpones 2020 winner announcement
The Women's Prize for Fiction is postponing the announcement of this year's winner until Sept. 9, 2020.
For the first time since its inception 25 years ago, the awards ceremony, which honours outstanding fiction written by women around the world, will not take place in the summer.
The decision to postpone was made in light of growing concern over the spread of COVID-19.
The £30,000 (approx. $51,335 Cdn) prize recognizes the year's best novel written by a woman in English.
British writers Bernardine Evaristo, Hilary Mantel and American journalist Taffy Brodesser-Akner are among the 16 authors longlisted for the 2020 prize, for their novels Girl, Woman, Other, The Mirror and the Light and Fleishman is in Trouble, respectively.
There are no Canadians on the longlist this year.
The full longlist, which was announced on March 3, is:
- Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara
- Fleishman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
- Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams
- Dominicana by Angie Cruz
- Actress by Anne Enright
- Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
- Nightingale Point by Luan Goldie
- A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes
- How We Disappeared by Jing-Jing Lee
- The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo
- The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel
- Girl by Edna O'Brien
- Hamnet by Maggie O' Farrell
- Weather by Jenny Offill
- The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
- Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson
While the shortlist of six novels will be revealed on April 22, 2020, as planned, the annual shortlist readings event has also been rescheduled for September.
The 2021 prize will not be affected. The call for submissions from publishers still scheduled for this September.
American novelist Tayari Jones won the 2019 award for An American Marriage.
Other past winners include Kamila Shamsie, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Zadie Smith.
Canadians who have won the award include Toronto's Anne Michaels (for her 1996 novel Fugitive Pieces) and Winnipeg's Carol Shields (for her 1997 novel Larry's Party).
