Throughout the Women’s Prize for Fiction’s 30 year history we have spotlighted some truly talented authors.

Each has their own unique story to tell. Let’s hear from some of the longlisted, shortlisted and winners about their books and inspirations. Find out more about the twenty-five books selected to celebrate the prize at WHSmith’s here.

The Bandit Queens

by Parini Shroff

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Describe your novel in one sentence as if you were telling a friend.

It’s a dark comedy following Geeta, a village woman with a reputation who is approached by aspiring widows demanding Geeta’s begrudging help, which leads to far-reaching consequences.

What inspired you to write The Bandit Queens?

While visiting India, I observed a micro-loan group meeting. It was empowering and wonderful, but I wondered what, in a rural area of a patriarchal country, could stop any of their husbands should they choose to exert their dominance? What if a husband stole? What if his wife wanted justice, albeit dark justice?

The Book of Form and Emptiness

by Ruth Ozeki

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Can you describe The Book of Form and Emptiness in one sentence?

The book tells the story of a young boy who, after his father dies, starts to hear the voices of objects speaking to him.

What inspired you to write The Book of Form and Emptiness?

As a child, I related to objects as though they were semi-sentient, and even now I think about the stories that things could tell if only they could speak. In Zen, there is a koan, “Do insentient beings speak the Dharma?” Do things (trees, pebbles, toaster ovens, nuclear reactors, etc.) speak? Can they teach us about life? About reality? Obviously, the answer is yes, if we could only learn to listen.

My Name is Lucy Barton

by Elizabeth Strout

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Did you ever want to be anything but a writer?

I never remember wanting to be anything but a writer. In fact, I feel I was born a writer, and I always knew that. I do remember a phase when I was quite young, thinking perhaps I could be an astronaut (I suspect the point of view was interesting to me, to think of seeing the earth all on its own, so far away.) And I remember fleetingly wishing I could be a concert pianist, but I had such stage fright I knew that would never happen. So writing was always with me, starting from my earliest memory of myself; I was a writer.

What was the initial inspiration behind My Name is Lucy Barton?

I guess the inspiration for Lucy Barton came from initial scenes I kept playing with, having a mother and a daughter in that hospital room. I sort of never intended to write that book, it just kept coming to me and unfolding to me as I heard her voice. It was kind of a strange, and lovely, experience. But the initial impulse had something to do with that mother at the foot of her bed in the hospital.

A Little Life

by Hanya Yanagihara

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A Little Life is often unflinchingly dark – was it difficult for you to consistently occupy this mental space during the 18 months it took you to write the book?

No, not really. There were passages that were more challenging than others to write, but overall, the experience was — while exhausting — also oddly joyful. There were great periods in the writing of this book when it felt that it was appearing to me in large, whole sections, and my job was to transcribe those sections. All writers know how rare this sensation is, and how, when you are lucky enough to experience it, you daren’t do anything to disturb it. Also, I had a job to go to, which knocked me out of the life of this book for at least nine hours a day, and which was a necessary reprieve. What I didn’t expect was the after-effect, which has been much longer and more difficult than I’d anticipated.


In many ways your book elevates friendship above romance – is this something you feel strongly about?

I don’t think it elevates friendship above all other types of relationships, but I hope it does make a compelling argument that friendship is a much more elemental, more necessary, and more sustaining relationship than we give it credit for being. The first friend we choose is our first announcement to the world of selfhood: This is my person, this is what it says about me.

The Power by Naomi Alderman

The Power

by Naomi Alderman

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How did the idea come to create a matriarchal society in The Power? Did the end result differ much from your original vision?

I’m not sure it’s exactly ‘matriarchal’ in that we don’t quite get to the point where mothers are passing on power to daughters. And I didn’t start from the idea of making a matriarchal society. But the idea did come from a particular moment in my life. I was going through a really horrible breakup, one of those ones where you wake up every morning, have a cry and then get on with your day. And in the middle of all this emotional turmoil, I got onto the tube and saw a poster advertising a movie with a photograph of a beautiful woman crying, beautifully. And in that moment it felt like the whole of the society I live in saying to me “oh yes, we like it when you cry, we think it’s sexy”. And something just snapped in me and all I could think was: what would it take for me to be able to get onto this tube train and see a sexy photo of a *man* crying? What’s the smallest thing I could change? And this novel is the answer to that question, or at least an attempt to think it through for myself.

I didn’t really know where it would go when I started. I just had this idea about women developing a strange new power – one that I eventually based on electric eels. I just thought through what might happen and that’s how I wrote the book.

Ordinary People by Diana Evans

Ordinary People

by Diana Evans

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Ordinary People is based around two couples struggling to maintain long-term love. Why was this something you wanted to write about?

My primary literary inspirations for broaching the subject were John Updike’s Couples and Richard Yates’s Revolutionary Road, both novels that dissect marriage and long-term domestic love from a male perspective. I wanted to redress the balance and present the story equally from male and female perspectives, in the context of contemporary Black-British middle-class Londoners who I feel lack adequate visibility in our culture. On a personal level, I have observed in my own circle of friends how a lack of honesty about our lives sets in as we get older, as if we’re afraid of showing failure in love and marriage. A frank and clear picture was due, perhaps to make us braver. Literature has a special power that way to free us with the truth.

My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

My Sister, the Serial Killer

by Oyinkan Braithwaite

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What was the initial inspiration behind My Sister, the Serial Killer?

I wrote two poems in 2007. One was based on the black widow spider – a creature that sometimes devours her mates. The second poem was about two friends, one who is beautiful and poisons her husbands to inherit their fortunes and the other who is plain and keeps her friend’s secret until a man comes between them. I suppose these two poems laid the groundwork for My Sister, the Serial Killer.

Did you always intend for your debut novel to be a thriller?

I didn’t really know what it was when I started writing it. I knew there would be a number of male victims, but I didn’t concern myself with genre.

Milkman by Anna Burns

Milkman

by Anna Burns

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You’ve said that when you write you don’t start with a specific narrative in your head – could you tell us about the process behind Milkman? What was your first flash of inspiration and how did the narrative start to take shape?

My creative process involves turning up at the desk and waiting. It’s a very active, receptive waiting for characters to turn up and to start telling me their stories. Milkman grew out of some notes I had about the reaction I used to get from others towards my teenage habit of reading while walking. This always surprised me – that I would be noticeable doing this, and that it was something worth commenting upon. I had only just begun to explore this in my writing when this teenager popped up. She was walking along what felt to me was an interface road. She was reading Ivanhoe but wasn’t paying attention really to her book because she was aggrieved at being wronged by her sister. This individual, whom I later found out was my narrator, simply started to tell me her story, using her own particular voice and language from the start. She came fully formed, as my characters do. I just had to keep listening and writing everything down as accurately as I could. This was the start of what eventually became Milkman.

Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason

Sorrow and Bliss

by Meg Mason

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What inspired you to write Sorrow and Bliss?

Fear. Because, before Sorrow and Bliss, I worked for a year on a manuscript that had to be thrown away and although I was terrified to try again, I was more terrified of the alternative; that it would be the end if I didn’t.

Can you describe Sorrow and Bliss in one sentence?

Everything I have seen or felt, thought or read somewhere and found funny or sad, saved up and put into a single story.