# List of Women's Prize for Fiction winners

The Women's Prize for Fiction (previously called Orange Prize for Fiction (1996–2006 & 2009–12), Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction (2007–2008) and Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction (2014–2017)) is one of the United Kingdom's most prestigious literary prizes, annually awarded to a female author of any nationality for the best original full-length novel written in English, and published in the United Kingdom in the preceding year. The prize was originally due to be launched in 1994 with the support of Mitsubishi but public controversy over the merits of the award caused the sponsorship to be withdrawn. Funding from Orange, a UK mobile network operator and Internet service provider, allowed the prize to be launched in 1996 by a committee of male and female "journalists, reviewers, agents, publishers, librarians, booksellers", including current Honorary Director Kate Mosse.
In May 2012, it was announced that Orange would be ending its sponsorship of the prize. In 2012, the award was formally known as the "Women's Prize for Fiction", and was sponsored by "private benefactors" led by Cherie Blair and writers Joanna Trollope and Elizabeth Buchan. In 2013, the new sponsor became Baileys. In January 2017 the company announced that it was the last year that they would sponsor the prize. In June 2017, the prize announced it would change its name to simply "Women's Prize for Fiction" starting in 2018, and will be supported by a family of sponsors.
The prize was established to recognise the contribution of female writers, whom Mosse believed were often overlooked in other major literary awards, and in reaction to the all-male shortlist for the 1991 Booker Prize. The winner of the prize receives £30,000, along with a bronze sculpture called the Bessie created by artist Grizel Niven, the sister of actor and writer David Niven. Typically, a longlist of nominees is announced around March each year, followed by a shortlist in June; within days the winner is announced. The winner is selected by a board of "five leading women" each year. In 2005, judges named Andrea Levy's Small Island as the "Orange of Oranges", the best novel of the preceding decade.
The BBC suggests that the prize forms part of the "trinity" of UK literary prizes, along with the Booker Prize and the Costa Book Awards; the sales of works by the nominees of these awards are significantly boosted. Levy's 2004 winning book sold almost one million copies (in comparison to less than 600,000 for the Booker Prize winner of the same year), while sales of Helen Dunmore's A Spell of Winter quadrupled after being awarded the inaugural prize. Valerie Martin's 2003 award saw her novel sales increase tenfold after the award, and British libraries, who often support the prize with various promotions, reported success in introducing people to new authors: "48% said that they had tried new writers as a result of the promotion, and 42% said that they would try other books by the new authors they had read."
However, the fact that the prize singles out female writers is not without controversy. After the prize was founded, Auberon Waugh nicknamed it the "Lemon Prize" while Germaine Greer claimed there would soon be a prize for "writers with red hair". Winner of the 1990 Booker Prize, A. S. Byatt, called it a "sexist prize", claiming "such a prize was never needed." In 1999, the chairwoman of the judges, Lola Young, said that the British fiction they were asked to appraise fell into two categories, either "insular and parochial" or "domestic in a piddling kind of way", unlike American authors who "take small, intimate stories and set them against this vast physical and cultural landscape which is very appealing." Linda Grant suffered accusations of plagiarism following her award in 2000, while the following year, a panel of male critics produced their own shortlist and heavily criticised the genuine shortlist. Though full of praise for the winner of the 2007 prize, the chair of the judging panel Muriel Gray decried the fact that the shortlist had to be whittled down from "a lot of dross", while former editor of The Times Simon Jenkins called it "sexist". In 2008, writer Tim Lott called the award "a sexist con-trick" and said, "the Orange Prize is sexist and discriminatory, and it should be shunned".
Barbara Kingsolver is the only author to have won the prize twice, doing so in 2010 for The Lacuna and in 2023 for Demon Copperhead. Margaret Atwood has been nominated three times without a win. Hilary Mantel was shortlisted three times without winning, for Beyond Black (2005) and the first two novels in her Tudor trilogy, Wolf Hall (2009) and Bring Up The Bodies (2012), which both won the Booker Prize. The third book in the trilogy, The Mirror & the Light, was shortlisted in April 2020, a year in which the award (usually given in May) was postponed to September. Since the inaugural award to Helen Dunmore, British writers have won five times, while North American authors have secured the prize ten times.

## Recipients
### 1990s

Women's Prize for Fiction winners and shortlisted nominees, 1996–1999 :
| Year | Author | Title | Result |
| 1996 | Helen Dunmore | A Spell of Winter | Winner |
| 1996 | Julia Blackburn | The Book of Colour | Shortlist |
| 1996 | Pagan Kennedy | Spinsters | Shortlist |
| 1996 | Amy Tan | The Hundred Secret Senses | Shortlist |
| 1996 | Anne Tyler | Ladder of Years | Shortlist |
| 1996 | Marianne Wiggins | Eveless Eden | Shortlist |
| 1997 | Anne Michaels | Fugitive Pieces | Winner |
| 1997 | Margaret Atwood | Alias Grace | Shortlist |
| 1997 | Deirdre Madden | One by One in the Darkness | Shortlist |
| 1997 | Jane Mendelsohn | I Was Amelia Earhart | Shortlist |
| 1997 | Annie Proulx | Accordion Crimes | Shortlist |
| 1997 | Manda Scott | Hen's Teeth | Shortlist |
| 1998 | Carol Shields | Larry's Party | Winner |
| 1998 | Kirsten Bakis | Lives of the Monster Dogs | Shortlist |
| 1998 | Pauline Melville | The Ventriloquist's Tale | Shortlist |
| 1998 | Ann Patchett | The Magician's Assistant | Shortlist |
| 1998 | Deirdre Purcell | Love Like Hate Adore | Shortlist |
| 1998 | Anita Shreve | The Weight of Water | Shortlist |
| 1999 | Suzanne Berne | A Crime in the Neighborhood | Winner |
| 1999 | Julia Blackburn | The Leper's Companions | Shortlist |
| 1999 | Marilyn Bowering | Visible Worlds | Shortlist |
| 1999 | Jane Hamilton | The Short History of a Prince | Shortlist |
| 1999 | Barbara Kingsolver | The Poisonwood Bible | Shortlist |
| 1999 | Toni Morrison | Paradise | Shortlist |

### 2000s

Women's Prize for Fiction winners and shortlisted nominees, 2000–2009 :
| Year | Author | Title | Result |
| 2000 | Linda Grant | When I Lived in Modern Times | Winner |
| 2000 | Judy Budnitz | If I Told You Once | Shortlist |
| 2000 | Éilís Ní Dhuibhne | The Dancers Dancing | Shortlist |
| 2000 | Zadie Smith | White Teeth | Shortlist |
| 2000 | Elizabeth Strout | Amy and Isabelle | Shortlist |
| 2000 | Rebecca Wells | Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood | Shortlist |
| 2001 | Kate Grenville | The Idea of Perfection | Winner |
| 2001 | Margaret Atwood | The Blind Assassin | Shortlist |
| 2001 | Jill Dawson | Fred & Edie | Shortlist |
| 2001 | Rosina Lippi | Homestead | Shortlist |
| 2001 | Jane Smiley | Horse Heaven | Shortlist |
| 2001 | Ali Smith | Hotel World | Shortlist |
| 2002 | Ann Patchett | Bel Canto | Winner |
| 2002 | Anna Burns | No Bones | Shortlist |
| 2002 | Helen Dunmore | The Siege | Shortlist |
| 2002 | Maggie Gee | The White Family | Shortlist |
| 2002 | Chloe Hooper | A Child's Book of True Crime | Shortlist |
| 2002 | Sarah Waters | Fingersmith | Shortlist |
| 2003 | Valerie Martin | Property | Winner |
| 2003 | Anne Donovan | Buddha Da | Shortlist |
| 2003 | Shena Mackay | Heligoland | Shortlist |
| 2003 | Carol Shields | Unless | Shortlist |
| 2003 | Zadie Smith | The Autograph Man | Shortlist |
| 2003 | Donna Tartt | The Little Friend | Shortlist |
| 2004 | Andrea Levy | Small Island | Winner |
| 2004 | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | Purple Hibiscus | Shortlist |
| 2004 | Margaret Atwood | Oryx and Crake | Shortlist |
| 2004 | Shirley Hazzard | The Great Fire | Shortlist |
| 2004 | Gillian Slovo | Ice Road | Shortlist |
| 2004 | Rose Tremain | The Colour | Shortlist |
| 2005 | Lionel Shriver | We Need to Talk About Kevin | Winner |
| 2005 | Joolz Denby | Billie Morgan | Shortlist |
| 2005 | Jane Gardam | Old Filth | Shortlist |
| 2005 | Sheri Holman | The Mammoth Cheese | Shortlist |
| 2005 | Marina Lewycka | A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian | Shortlist |
| 2005 | Maile Meloy | Liars and Saints | Shortlist |
| 2006 | Zadie Smith | On Beauty | Winner |
| 2006 | Nicole Krauss | The History of Love | Shortlist |
| 2006 | Hilary Mantel | Beyond Black | Shortlist |
| 2006 | Ali Smith | The Accidental | Shortlist |
| 2006 | Carrie Tiffany | Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living | Shortlist |
| 2006 | Sarah Waters | The Night Watch | Shortlist |
| 2007 | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | Half of a Yellow Sun | Winner |
| 2007 | Rachel Cusk | Arlington Park | Shortlist |
| 2007 | Kiran Desai | The Inheritance of Loss | Shortlist |
| 2007 | Xiaolu Guo | A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers | Shortlist |
| 2007 | Jane Harris | The Observations | Shortlist |
| 2007 | Anne Tyler | Digging to America | Shortlist |
| 2008 | Rose Tremain | The Road Home | Winner |
| 2008 | Nancy Huston | Fault Lines | Shortlist |
| 2008 | Sadie Jones | The Outcast | Shortlist |
| 2008 | Charlotte Mendelson | When We Were Bad | Shortlist |
| 2008 | Heather O'Neill | Lullabies for Little Criminals | Shortlist |
| 2008 | Patricia Wood | Lottery | Shortlist |
| 2009 | Marilynne Robinson | Home | Winner |
| 2009 | Ellen Feldman | Scottsboro | Shortlist |
| 2009 | Samantha Harvey | The Wilderness | Shortlist |
| 2009 | Samantha Hunt | The Invention of Everything Else | Shortlist |
| 2009 | Deirdre Madden | Molly Fox's Birthday | Shortlist |
| 2009 | Kamila Shamsie | Burnt Shadows | Shortlist |

### 2010s

Women's Prize for Fiction winners and shortlisted nominees, 2010–2019 :
| Year | Author | Title | Result |
| 2010 | Barbara Kingsolver | The Lacuna | Winner |
| 2010 | Rosie Alison | The Very Thought of You | Shortlist |
| 2010 | Attica Locke | Black Water Rising | Shortlist |
| 2010 | Hilary Mantel | Wolf Hall | Shortlist |
| 2010 | Lorrie Moore | A Gate at the Stairs | Shortlist |
| 2010 | Monique Roffey | The White Woman on the Green Bicycle | Shortlist |
| 2011 | Téa Obreht | The Tiger's Wife | Winner |
| 2011 | Emma Donoghue | Room | Shortlist |
| 2011 | Aminatta Forna | The Memory of Love | Shortlist |
| 2011 | Emma Henderson | Grace Williams Says it Loud | Shortlist |
| 2011 | Nicole Krauss | Great House | Shortlist |
| 2011 | Kathleen Winter | Annabel | Shortlist |
| 2012 | Madeline Miller | The Song of Achilles | Winner |
| 2012 | Esi Edugyan | Half-Blood Blues | Shortlist |
| 2012 | Anne Enright | The Forgotten Waltz | Shortlist |
| 2012 | Georgina Harding | Painter of Silence | Shortlist |
| 2012 | Cynthia Ozick | Foreign Bodies | Shortlist |
| 2012 | Ann Patchett | State of Wonder | Shortlist |
| 2013 | A. M. Homes | May We Be Forgiven | Winner |
| 2013 | Kate Atkinson | Life After Life | Shortlist |
| 2013 | Barbara Kingsolver | Flight Behaviour | Shortlist |
| 2013 | Hilary Mantel | Bring Up the Bodies | Shortlist |
| 2013 | Maria Semple | Where'd You Go, Bernadette | Shortlist |
| 2013 | Zadie Smith | NW | Shortlist |
| 2014 | Eimear McBride | A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing | Winner |
| 2014 | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | Americanah | Shortlist |
| 2014 | Hannah Kent | Burial Rites | Shortlist |
| 2014 | Jhumpa Lahiri | The Lowland | Shortlist |
| 2014 | Audrey Magee | The Undertaking | Shortlist |
| 2014 | Donna Tartt | The Goldfinch | Shortlist |
| 2015 | Ali Smith | How to Be Both | Winner |
| 2015 | Rachel Cusk | Outline | Shortlist |
| 2015 | Laline Paull | The Bees | Shortlist |
| 2015 | Kamila Shamsie | A God in Every Stone | Shortlist |
| 2015 | Anne Tyler | A Spool of Blue Thread | Shortlist |
| 2015 | Sarah Waters | The Paying Guests | Shortlist |
| 2016 | Lisa McInerney | The Glorious Heresies | Winner |
| 2016 | Cynthia Bond | Ruby | Shortlist |
| 2016 | Anne Enright | The Green Road | Shortlist |
| 2016 | Elizabeth McKenzie | The Portable Veblen | Shortlist |
| 2016 | Hannah Rothschild | The Improbability of Love | Shortlist |
| 2016 | Hanya Yanagihara | A Little Life | Shortlist |
| 2017 | Naomi Alderman | The Power | Winner |
| 2017 | Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ | Stay With Me | Shortlist |
| 2017 | Linda Grant | The Dark Circle | Shortlist |
| 2017 | C. E. Morgan | The Sport of Kings | Shortlist |
| 2017 | Gwendoline Riley | First Love | Shortlist |
| 2017 | Madeleine Thien | Do Not Say We Have Nothing | Shortlist |
| 2018 | Kamila Shamsie | Home Fire | Winner |
| 2018 | Elif Batuman | The Idiot | Shortlist |
| 2018 | Imogen Hermes Gowar | The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock | Shortlist |
| 2018 | Jessie Greengrass | Sight | Shortlist |
| 2018 | Meena Kandasamy | When I hit you: or, a Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife | Shortlist |
| 2018 | Jesmyn Ward | Sing, Unburied, Sing | Shortlist |
| 2019 | Tayari Jones | An American Marriage | Winner |
| 2019 | Pat Barker | The Silence of the Girls | Shortlist |
| 2019 | Oyinkan Braithwaite | My Sister, the Serial Killer | Shortlist |
| 2019 | Anna Burns | Milkman | Shortlist |
| 2019 | Diana Evans | Ordinary People | Shortlist |
| 2019 | Madeline Miller | Circe | Shortlist |

### 2020s

Women's Prize for Fiction winners and shortlisted nominees, 2020–2029 :
| Year | Author | Title | Result |
| 2020 | Maggie O'Farrell | Hamnet | Winner |
| 2020 | Angie Cruz | Dominicana | Shortlist |
| 2020 | Bernardine Evaristo | Girl, Woman, Other | Shortlist |
| 2020 | Natalie Haynes | A Thousand Ships | Shortlist |
| 2020 | Hilary Mantel | The Mirror & the Light | Shortlist |
| 2020 | Jenny Offill | Weather | Shortlist |
| 2021 | Susanna Clarke | Piranesi | Winner |
| 2021 | Brit Bennett | The Vanishing Half | Shortlist |
| 2021 | Claire Fuller | Unsettled Ground | Shortlist |
| 2021 | Yaa Gyasi | Transcendent Kingdom | Shortlist |
| 2021 | Cherie Jones | How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House | Shortlist |
| 2021 | Patricia Lockwood | No One Is Talking About This | Shortlist |
| 2022 | Ruth Ozeki | The Book of Form and Emptiness | Winner |
| 2022 | Lisa Allen-Agostini | The Bread the Devil Knead | Shortlist |
| 2022 | Louise Erdrich | The Sentence | Shortlist |
| 2022 | Meg Mason | Sorrow and Bliss | Shortlist |
| 2022 | Elif Shafak | The Island of Missing Trees | Shortlist |
| 2022 | Maggie Shipstead | Great Circle | Shortlist |
| 2023 | Barbara Kingsolver | Demon Copperhead | Winner |
| 2023 | Jacqueline Crooks | Fire Rush | Shortlist |
| 2023 | Louise Kennedy | Trespasses | Shortlist |
| 2023 | Priscilla Morris | Black Butterflies | Shortlist |
| 2023 | Maggie O'Farrell | The Marriage Portrait | Shortlist |
| 2023 | Laline Paull | Pod | Shortlist |
| 2024 | V. V. Ganeshananthan | Brotherless Night | Winner |
| 2024 | Anne Enright | The Wren, The Wren | Shortlist |
| 2024 | Kate Grenville | Restless Dolly Maunder | Shortlist |
| 2024 | Isabella Hammad | Enter Ghost | Shortlist |
| 2024 | Claire Kilroy | Soldier Sailor | Shortlist |
| 2024 | Aube Rey Lescure | River East, River West | Shortlist |