The View from The Women's Prize

The Judge's Final Dinner

I’ve judged many competitions over the years but none with the profile and heft of The Women’s Prize. 2025 is the 30th year of the Prize and I was the Chair of the Judges. No pressure. Fortunately, the organisers had chosen four brilliant women to team up with - Bryony Gordon, Diana Evans, Amelia Warner and Deborah Joseph. so the job was alot less daunting. Yes there were tons of books to read and yes, some of them were not to my taste. I found myself reading on the toilet and reading while walking (audiobooks), reading instead of watching the telly, vacuuming and tidying up. Reading at night, first thing in the morning and all the odd minutes and moments of the day. It was actually bliss. I fell back in love with intense reading, the kind I used to do before reading became work - as it sometimes is. More importantly, I got the chance to immerse myself in women’s thoughts. Here were books on every facet of life, life now, life in the past and the life to come. The books covered everything from love and loss and liberty to time travel, trickery and threesomes. Every book seemed to exclaim ‘This is me. This is us,’ and it was wonderful.

Wonderful too was meeting the shortlisted authors and seeing their joy and enthusiasm and although it’s a competition there was alot of comaraderie and support especially the for the debut writers who were having all their dreams come true at the first time of asking.

The winner, The Safekeep by Yael Van der Wouden is simply a masterpiece. Faultless writing, perfect structure and one of the most compelling stories I’ve ever read. Thoroughly deserved. And Yael is wonderful - catch her at one of the upcoming literary festivals if you can.

That’s me judged out for a little while. I’ve had to turn down a couple of offers recently so I can get back to writing but I wouldn’t mind a stab at judging the Non Fiction Prize in a few years.

Watch this space.