Women’s Prize for Fiction 2023: debutants join past winners on shortlist

Louise Kennedy, author of Irish Novel of the Year and John McGahern Prize winner Trespasses, is one of three debutants on the 2023 Women Prize for Fiction shortlist, along with two former winners, Coleraine-born Maggie O’Farrell for The Marriage Portrait and US author Barbara Kingsolver for Demon Copperhead.

The other two debutants in the running for the prestigious £30,000 prize are Priscilla Morris, a Monaghan-based lecturer in creative writing at UCD, for Black Butterflies and Jacqueline Crooks, author of Fire Rush. The list is completed by Laline Paull for Pod, her second shortlisting after The Bees in 2015.

Now in its 28th year, the prize champions women writing in English on a global stage, celebrating the very best writing by women for everyone.

[ Louise Kennedy Q&A ]

[ Trespasses review ]

The shortlist offers globe-spanning settings – from former Yugoslavia, Jamaica and the Indian Ocean, to Italy, Virginia and Ireland. While three of the novels capture turbulent, pivotal moments in modern history – The Troubles in Northern Ireland (1975) in Trespasses; the Southall Riots (1979) in Fire Rush, and the Siege of Sarajevo (1992–96) in Black Butterflies – the shortlist also features a story set in de Medici’s court in 16th-century Florence. There are timely, contemporary settings too: the modern opioid crisis in America in Demon Copperhead, and the ocean world against the backdrop of environmental disaster in Pod.

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[ Priscilla Morris essay ]

[ The Marriage Portrait review ]

The diverse selection is unified by several overlapping themes, including civil unrest; the warring realms of the personal and the political; the solace of art and creativity; and doomed love.

Chair of judges, broadcaster and writer Louise Minchin, said: “This is an exquisite set of ambitious, diverse, thoughtful, hard-hitting and emotionally engaging novels. A glittering showcase of the power of women’s writing. My fellow judges and I feel it has been a huge privilege to read these novels, and we are delighted to be part of their journey, bringing them to the attention of more readers from across the world.”

[ Barbara Kingsolver interview ]

[ Demon Copperhead review ]

Minchin is joined on the judging panel by novelist Rachel Joyce; journalist, podcaster and writer Bella Mackie; novelist and short story writer Irenosen Okojie; and Tulip Siddiq MP.

Set up in 1996 to celebrate and promote fiction by women to the widest range of readers possible, the Women’s Prize for Fiction is awarded for the best full-length novel of the year written by a woman and published in the UK between April 1st, 2022 and March 31st, 2023. The 2023 Women’s Prize for Fiction will be awarded on June 14th at the Women’s Prize Trust’s Summer Party in central London. The winner will receive an anonymously endowed cheque for £30,000 and a limited-edition bronze figurine known as a ‘Bessie’, created and donated by the artist Grizel Niven.

O’Farrell won with Hamnet in 2020 and Kingsolver in 2010 with The Lacuna. The latter was also shortlisted with Flight Behaviour in 2013.