LONDON ā Go into many bookstores, and the nonfiction shelves will be dominated by men.
The Womenās Prize for Nonfiction hopes to change that.
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āNonfiction is still perceived to some extent as a manās game,ā said British historian Suzannah Lipscomb, who is chairing the judging panel for the inaugural edition of the U.K.-based prize. The judges announced a list of 16 contenders for the 30,000 pound ($38,000) award on Thursday.
An offshoot of the 28-year-old Womenās Prize for Fiction, whose past winners include Zadie Smith, Tayari Jones and Barbara Kingsolver, the new prize is open to female English-language writers from any country in any nonfiction genre.
Lipscomb noted that in 2022, only 26.5% of nonfiction books reviewed in Britainās newspapers were by women, and male writers dominated established nonfiction writing prizes.
āIn all the ways that we recognize expertise and authority ā giving it exposure, giving it attention, sales, money earned by the authors ā women were not featuring as highly as their male counterparts,ā she said. āSo I think that we do still need to close what (journalist) Mary Ann Sieghart called the authority gap. And thatās why this prize is needed.ā
The company Nielsen Book Research found in 2019 that women bought 59% of all the books sold in the U.K., but men accounted for just over half of adult nonfiction purchases.
Authors from the United States, Australia, Canada, India, Jamaica, the Philippines and the U.K. are on the prize longlist, chosen from 120 books submitted by publishers.
They include author-activist Naomi Klein ās plunge into online misinformation, āDoppleganger,ā and journalist Patricia Evangelistaās āSome People Need Killing,ā a searing investigation of the Philippinesā drug war.
There are works by leading academics and books on science and technology, including Cat Bohannonās āEve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolutionā and Madhumita Murgiaās āCode-Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI.ā
The list spans genres including travelogue (Alice Albiniaās āThe Britannias: An Island Questā), history (Leah Redmond Changās Renaissance study āYoung Queensā), biography (Anna Funderās āWifedom: Mrs. Orwellās Invisible Lifeā) and autobiography (Safiya Sinclairās āHow to Say Babylon: A Jamaican Memoirā).
Asked what unites the disparate roster, Lipscomb quotes a line from Funderās book: āThe project of good writing is to reveal to us the world we thought we knew.ā
āThere is a trend towards redressing wrongs, telling untold stories, exposing truths, revealing hypocrisies,ā she said. āThat sense of making good comes out of them.ā
Six finalists for the nonfiction award will be announced on March 27, and the winner will be unveiled at a ceremony in London on June 13.