Originators
The 2027 Selection Panel
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A writer’s life is not an easy one, nor is having the time and space to do the work something any of us can take for granted. In my own development, it was often the vote of confidence from teachers and mentors—those who recognized something in me before I could recognize it in myself—that pushed me to work harder and dig deeper.” A.M. Homes, chair of the 2027 Originators selection panel
The inaugural selection panel is chaired by A.M. Homes and includes Virginia Evans, V.V. Ganeshananthan, Tayari Jones, and Nicole Krauss, all Women’s Prize for Fiction alum. They will work with the five finalists to refine and present their work to the wider literary world, with additional support provided by publishing experts, industry leaders, and creatives.
A.M. Homes (Chair) is the author of 13 books, including May We Be Forgiven, which won the 2013 Women’s Prize for Fiction, and the internationally bestselling memoir, The Mistress’s Daughter. Her work has been translated into 22 languages, and she writes frequently on the arts for publications such as Artforum, Granta, McSweeney’s, The New Yorker, and The New York Times and is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, Bomb, and Blind Spot. Homes was a writer/co-executive producer with David E. Kelley on Mr. Mercedes, and on USA’s Falling Water. Homes was a writer/producer of the original L Word, and penned the adaptation of her novel, Jack, for Showtime. She is Professor of the Practice, Creative Writing, at the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University and lives in New York City.
Virginia Evans won the 2026 Women’s Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Hemingway Award for her debut novel The Correspondent, a number one Sunday Times and a New York Times bestseller. She lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, attended James Madison University for her bachelor’s in English literature, as well as Trinity College in Dublin for her master’s of philosophy in creative writing. A film adaptation of The Correspondent by Lionsgate is currently in development, starring Academy Award®–winner Jane Fonda. Fonda will also produce the film alongside Todd Lieberman via Hidden Pictures. Cat Vasko will write the screenplay and serve as executive producer, alongside Virginia Evans.
V.V. Ganeshananthan is the author of the novels Brotherless Night, winner of the 2024 Women’s Prize for Fiction, the 2024 Carol Shields Prize, and the 2023 Asian Prize, and Love Marriage, longlisted for the 2009 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her work has appeared in Granta, The New York Times, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading, among other publications. The National Endowment for the Arts, the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard, and the American Academy in Berlin have awarded her fellowships, and she is a member of the boards of the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies and the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop. Since 2017, she has co-hosted the Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast on Literary Hub, which is about the intersection of literature and the news. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of Minnesota, where she is a Professor of English.
Tayari Jones is the internationally bestselling author of five novels, including An American Marriage, which won the 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction, Leaving Atlanta, The Untelling, Silver Sparrow, and her most recent book, Kin. Jones is the recipient of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, a United States Artist Fellowship, NEA Fellowship, and a Radcliffe Institute Bunting Fellowship. She is also a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Born in Atlanta, Jones is a graduate of Spelman College, University of Iowa, and Arizona State University. She is currently Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University and an A.D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University.
Nicole Krauss is the author of the international bestsellers Man Walks Into a Room, Forest Dark, Great House (shortlisted for the 2011 Women’s Prize for Fiction), and The History of Love (shortlisted for the 2006 Women’s Prize for Fiction). Her short stories have been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, Esquire, and Best American Short Stories, and were collected in To Be a Man. Krauss was the inaugural Writer-in-Residence at the Zuckerman Mind, Brain and Behavior Institute at Columbia University, and has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy in Berlin, and the Cullman Center at the New York Public Library.
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