InaGuddle: Celebrating 30 Years of The Women's Prize for Fiction

To celebrate 30 years of the Women’s Prize for Fiction there will be an Outstanding Contribution Award presented on 4 June 2025. This one-off literary honour will be bestowed on a living female author “in recognition of her body of work, her significant contribution to literature, and her strong advocacy for women.” To be eligible, authors must have been previously longlisted, shortlisted or winners of the Women’s Prize for Fiction in the past thirty years and they must have published a minimum of five books.

I love this Women’s Prize for Fiction and this special prize is intriguing. I thought I would come up with my list of contenders. I have spent the past few days exploring the longlists of the past 30 years and have been reminded of how much reading joy I have had from these incredible authors. Over the 15 years I have been blogging, I have been heavily influenced by the longlist.

There are some incredible authors here - Kate Atkinson, Siri Hustvedt, Elif Shafak, Hilary Mantel, Toni Morrison, Rachel Cusk, Pat Barker, Anne Tyler, Naomi Alderman, Marilynne Robinson, MJ Hyland, Maggie O'Farrell, Linda Grant, Kate Grenville, Andrea Levy, Madeline Miller, Joyce Carol Oates, Jennifer Egan, Elizabeth Strout, Carol Shields, Donna Tartt, Bernardine Evaristo, VV Ganeshananthan, Amy Tan and many, many more.

When thinking about the criteria there are a lot of women who have made an outstanding contribution and I reckon the prize will go to one of the following:

Ali Smith won the Women's Prize in 2015 for How to be Both. She was shortlisted twice, for Hotel World in 2001 and The Accidental in 2006, and longlisted for There but for the in 2012 and Summer in 2021.

Ann Patchett won the Women's Prize in 2002 for Bel Canto. She was shortlisted for The Magician's Assistant in 1998 and State of Wonder in 2012, and longlisted for The Dutch House in 2020.

Anne Enright has never won, but has been on the list five times. She was longlisted for her Booker Prize winning novel The Gathering in 2008, and again in 2020 for Actress. She was shortlisted three times - for The Green Road in 2016, The Forgotten Waltz in 2012 and most recently for The Wren, The Wren in 2024.

Barbara Kingsolver is the only person to have won this award twice. She won in 2010 for The Lacuna, and again in 2023 for Demon Copperhead. She was shortlisted in 1999 for The Poisonwood Bible and in 2013 for Flight Behaviour.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie won for Half of a Yellow Sun in 2007. She has also been shortlisted in 2004 for Purple Hibiscus and in 2014 for Americanah. She was longlisted in 2025 for Dream Count.

Kamila Shamsie won in 2018 for Home Fire and was shortlisted twice, in 2009 for Burnt Shadows and in 2015 for A God in Every Stone.

Linda Grant won in 2002 for her novel When I Lived in Modern Times. She was shortlisted in 2017 for The Dark Circle, and longlisted twice - in 1997 for The Cast Iron Shore and 2008 for The Clothes on Their Backs.

Margaret Atwood has never won, but has made the list five times. She was shortlisted for Alias Grace in 1997, for the Booker Prize winning The Blind Assassin in 2001, and for Oryx and Crake in 2004. She was longlisted for Hag-Seed in 2017 and for Maddaddam in 2014.

Sarah Waters has been shortlisted three times - for Fingersmith in 2002, The Night Watch in 2006 and The Paying Guests in 2015. She was longlisted for The Little Stranger in 2010

Zadie Smith won the Women's Prize for On Beauty in 2006. She was shortlisted on three other occasions - for White Teeth in 2000, The Autograph Man in 2006 and for N-W in 2013.

If I had to narrow my shortlist of ten down, I reckon the award will either go to Margaret Atwood in recognition of her influential lifetime of writing or to Barbara Kingsolver who is so beloved by the Women's Prize. Cannot wait to find out which incredible author is recognised for outstanding contribution.

Want more?

I have compiled a list of all the longlisted books over the past thirty years below with links to any blog posts I have written about them and my reviews of longlisted books.

2025 Longlist

Aria Aber - Good Girl (Shortlist)
Kaliane Bradley - The Ministry of Time
Jenni Daiches - Somewhere Else
Saraid de Silva – Amma
Karen Jennings - Crooked Seeds
Miranda July - All Fours (Shortlist)
Laila Lalami - The Dream Hotel
Sanam Mahloudji - The Persians (Shortlist)
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Dream Count
Roisin O'Donnell – Nesting
Rosanna Pike - A Little Trickerie
Rose Ruane - Birding
Lucy Steeds - The Artist
Elizabeth Strout - Tell Me Everything (Shortlist)
Yael van der Wouden - The Safekeep (WINNER)
Nussaibah Younis – Fundamentally (Shortlist)

2024 Longlist

Maya Binyam – Hangman
Effie Black - In Defence of the Act
Alicia Elliott - And Then She Fell
Anne Enright - The Wren, The Wren (Shortlist)
Kate Foster - The Maiden
VV Ganeshananthan - Brotherless Night (WINNER)
Kate Grenville - Restless Dolly Maunder (Shortlist)
Isabella Hammad - Enter Ghost (Shortlist)
Claire Kilroy - Soldier Sailor (Shortlist)
Mirinae Lee - 8 Lives of a Century-Old Trickster
Karen Lord - The Blue, Beautiful World
Chetna Maroo - Western Lane
Peace Adzo Medie – Nightbloom
Megan Nolan - Ordinary Human Failings
Aube Rey Lescure - River East, River West (Shortlist)
Pam Williams - A Trace of Sun

2023 Longlist

NoViolet Bulawayo – Glory
Jennifer Croft – Homesick
Jacqueline Crooks - Fire Rush (Shortlist)
Camilla Grudova - Children of Paradise
Natalie Haynes - Stone Blind
Louise Kennedy – Trespasses (Shortlist)
Barbara Kingsolver - Demon Copperhead (WINNER)
Sophie Mackintosh - Cursed Bread
Elizabeth McKenzie - The Dog of the North
Priscilla Morris - Black Butterflies (Shortlist)
Maggie O'Farrell - The Marriage Portrait (Shortlist)
Sheena Patel - I'm a Fan
Cecile Pin - Wandering Souls
Laline Paull – Pod (Shortlist)
Parini Shroff - The Bandit Queens
Tara M Stringfellow - Memphis

2022 Longlist

Lisa Allen-Agnostini - The Bread the Devil Knead (Shortlist)
Lulu Allison - Salt Lick
Kirsty Capes – Careless
Catherine Chidgey - Remote Sympathy
Miranda Cowley Heller - The Paper Palace
Rachel Elliott – Flamingo
Louise Erdich - The Sentence (Shortlist)
Violet Kupersmith - Build Your House Around My Body
Meg Mason - Sorrow and Bliss (Shortlist)
Charlotte Mendelson - The Exhibitionist
Ruth Ozeki - The Book of Form and Emptiness (WINNER)
Leone Ross - This One Sky Day
Elif Shafak - The Island of Missing Trees (Shortlist)
Maggie Shipstead - Great Circle (Shortlist)
Dawnie Walton - The Final Revival of Opal & Nev
Morowa Yejide - Creatures of Passage

2021 Longlist

Brit Bennett - The Vanishing Half (Shortlist)
Clare Chambers - Small Pleasures
Susanna Clarke – Piranesi (WINNER)
Amanda Craig - The Golden Rule
Naoise Dolan - Exciting Times
Avni Doshi - Burnt Sugar
Dawn French - Because of You
Claire Fuller - Unsettled Ground (Shortlist)
Yaa Gyasi - Transcendent Kingdom (Shortlist)
Cherie Jones - How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House (Shortlist)
Raven Leilani - Luster
Patricia Lockwood - No One is Talking About This (Shortlist)
Annabel Lyon – Consent
Kathleen MacMahon - Nothing But Blue Sky
Torrey Peters - Detransition, Baby
Ali Smith - Summer

2020 Longlist

Deepa Anappara - Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line
Taffy Brodesser-Akner - Fleishman is in Trouble
Candice Carty-Williams - Queenie
Angie Cruz - Dominicana (Shortlist)
Anne Enright – Actress
Bernardine Evaristo - Girl, Woman, Other (Shortlist)
Luan Goldie - Nightingale Point
Natalie Haynes - A Thousand Ships (Shortlist)
Jing-Jing Lee - How We Disappeared
Claire Lomnardo - The Most Fun We Ever Had
Hilary Mantel - The Mirror and the Light (Shortlist)
Edna O’Brien – Girl
Maggie O’Farrell – Hamnet (WINNER)
Jenny Offill – Weather (Shortlist)
Ann Patchett – The Dutch House
Jacqueline Woodson - Red at the Bone

2019 Longlist

Pat Barker - The Silence of the Girls (Shortlist)
Yvonne Battle-Felton - Remembered
Oyinkan Braithwaite - My Sister, the Serial Killer (Shortlist)
Melissa Broder - The Pisces
Anna Burns - Milkman (Shortlist)
Akwaeke Emezi - Freshwater
Diana Evans - Ordinary People (Shortlist)
Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott - Swan Song
Tayari Jones - An American Marriage (WINNER)
Lillian Li - Number One Chinese Restaurant
Sophie van Llewyn - Bottled Goods
Valeria Luiselli - Lost Children Archive
Bernice L. McFadden - Praise Song for the Butterflies
Madeline Miller - Circe (Shortlist)
Sarah Moss - Ghost Wall
Sally Rooney - Normal People

2018 Longlist

Nicola Barker - Happy
Elif Batuman – The Idiot (Shortlist)
Joanna Cannon – Three Things About Elsie
Charmaine Craig – Miss Burma
Jennifer Egan – Manhattan Beach
Imogen Hermes Gowar – The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock (Shortlist)
Jessie Greengrass - Sight (Shortlist)
Gail Honeyman - Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine
Meena Kandasamy - When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife (Shortlist)
Fiona Mozley - Elmet
Arundhati Roy - The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
Sarah Schmidt - See What I Have Done
Rachel Seiffert - A Boy in Winter
Kamila Shamsie - Home Fire (WINNER)
Kit de Waal - The Trick to Time
Jesmyn Ward - Sing, Unburied, Sing (Shortlist)