We are so thrilled to announce our Discoveries 2025 winner Rosie Rowell for her atmospheric thriller, Down by the Stryth.
Exploring dysfunctional family relationships, generational trauma and the complexities of womanhood, her novel-in-progress follows the ramifications of a teenage girl’s disappearance. The atmospheric setting was inspired by the Bolton Strid, a section of the River Wharf which is famous for being the deadliest stretch of water in the world.
Rosie studied for her undergraduate degree in English Literature at Durham University and then went on to train at the opera school at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. Originally from London, she moved to Cardiff around seven years ago.
As winner of the prize, Rosie receives an offer of representation from Curtis Brown literary agency and a cash prize of £5,000.
Winning Discoveries has felt surreal and extraordinary. Like most writers, I’ve spent a long time sitting in my own thoughts, writing whenever I’ve got a free moment (mostly on the sofa in my pyjamas) and struggling to find the courage to put my work out into the world. Knowing that the judges see promise in the story I’ve worked so hard on and loved so deeply is incredibly encouraging. I’m so excited to see what will become of it.
Rosie Rowell
Jac Felipez is announced as this year’s Discoveries Scholar, winning a place on a three-month ‘Writing Your Novel’ course (worth £1,900) with Curtis Brown Creative to further develop her work-in-progress.
Jac’s novel-in-progress, A Long Ways from Home, is a turbulent crime novel set in London; a story of the abduction of a politician, fuelled by a hidden past of radical activism and radical art.
Jac is Head of Languages at a London comprehensive school. She has previously produced and directed television documentaries that focused on African-Caribbean stories, which have aimed to amplify underrepresented voices on the small screen.
My first emotion on finding out that I had been selected as the Discoveries 2025 Scholar was disbelief and I had to read the email multiple times before it sunk in. The Discoveries process has positively validated my writing and I feel elated and grateful to the readers and judges for believing in the potential of my novel-in-progress. I am proud to be part of the Discoveries 2025 cohort alongside so many remarkable women writers.
Jac Felipez
Rosie and Jac will also join Curtis Brown Creative’s bespoke two-week Discoveries Writing Development course with the fourteen other writers longlisted for Discoveries 2025. This will be tutored by the acclaimed author and former Women’s Prize shortlisted writer, Charlotte Mendelson.
All six writers on this year’s Discoveries shortlist will receive a one-to-one mentoring session with a Curtis Brown agent and a free place on the six-week online writing course of their choice with Curtis Brown Creative (worth £230). The shortlisted writers will also take part in a studio session on writing and recording for audio with Audible.
Now in its fifth year, The Discoveries programme, run by the Women’s Prize Trust in partnership with Curtis Brown literary agency, the Curtis Brown Creative writing school (both part of The Curtis Brown Group) and Audible, aims to find and support aspiring female novelists of all ages and backgrounds from across the UK and Ireland. Rosie and Jac are following in the footsteps of a growing community of female novelists who first achieved recognition through Discoveries.
I’m delighted to say that the process of choosing the winner and scholar for our 2025 Discoveries was tough, reminding us yet again of what a huge range of diverse and brilliant female talent is out there. I’ve no doubt that all the authors longlisted and shortlisted have a great writing future ahead of them. Rosie’s novel-in-progress is atmospheric, beautifully structured and puts the painful struggles of contemporary teenage girlhood vividly on the page. Jac’s developing novel is bold, intense, glitters with nuance and politics, and offers fascinating insights into black artists from the 1980s whose works are only now being ‘discovered’. A huge thank you and my admiration to my fellow judges for their enthusiasm, rigor, integrity and great company, and I can’t wait to see each of the novels find their way out into the world for readers to discover.
Kate Mosse, Chair of Judges
