2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction and Non-Fiction Shortlists Announced!

The Women’s Prize for Fiction is an award that was established in 1996. If it wasn’t obvious, the award is meant to recognize female authors exclusively. It came to be when the 1991 Booker Prize shortlist contained zero women on it, even though 60% of all novels were written by women.

Past winners of the award include inaugural winner Helen Dunmore, Anne Michaels, Ann Patchett, Zadie Smith, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Barbara Kingsolver, Susanna Clarke, V.V. Ganeshananthan, and many others. Ganeshananthan won last year for her coming-of-age novel Brotherless Night.

The Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction does not have as storied of a history, having just been established last year. The inaugural prize was won by Naomi Klein for Doppelganger.

Both prizes come with a cash prize of £30,000, along with a sculpture (for the fiction prize) or a statue (for non-fiction).

Here are the six shortlisted novels for both prizes:

2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction Shortlist

• Good Girl by Aria Aber
• All Fours by Miranda July
• The Persians by Sanam Mahloudji
• Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout
• The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden
• Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis

2025 Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction Shortlist

• A Thousand Threads by Neneh Cherry
• The Story of a Heart by Rachel Clarke
• Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton
• Agent Zo by Clare Mulley
• What the Wild Sea Can Be by Helen Scales
• Private Revolutions by Yuan Yang

Congratulations to each of the twelve women who made the shortlists!

The winners for both of these prestigious awards will be announced on June 12th, 2025 in London, England.

For more information on the Women’s Prizes, please visit WomensPrize.com and you can see the archives of the previous nominees and winners here.