The Women’s Prize for Fiction is the greatest celebration of female creativity in the world. The Women’s Prize for Fiction is one of the most successful, influential and popular literary prizes in the world, championing and amplifying women’s voices and nurturing a global community of readers.
The Prize was established in 1996 to highlight and remedy the imbalance in coverage, respect and reverence given to women writers versus their male peers, creating a platform for exceptional writing by women to shine.
The Prize is awarded annually to the author of the best full-length novel of the year written in English and published in the UK. The winner receives £30,000, anonymously endowed, and the ‘Bessie’, a bronze statuette created by the artist Grizel Niven.
The 2025 shortlist included six novels that explored the need for personal freedom and human connection, offering compelling multi-layered stories that urge us to sit up and take notice of the world around us.
The winner of the 2025 Prize was awarded to Yael van der Wouden for The Safekeep: an unsettling, tightly-plotted debut novel which explores repressed desire and historical amnesia set against the backdrop of the Netherlands post-World War II.
The Safekeep was also shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize.
Congratulations!
| Winners List | ||
|---|---|---|
| 2025 Winner | Yael van der Wouden | The Safekeep |
| 2024 Winner | V.V Ganeshananthan | Brotherless Night |
| 2023 Winner | Barbara Kingsolver | Demon Copperhead |
| 2022 Winner | Ruth Ozeki | Book of Form and Emptiness |
| 2021 Winner | Susanna Clarke | Piranesi |
For more on the Women’s Prize for Fiction, visit: https://www.womensprize.com/
