New prize awards $50K US for unpublished work with woman as main protagonist

[The Bluestocking]

A new literary prize worth $50,000 US will honour unpublished work featuring women as lead characters, in hopes to balance out a trend that shows most literary prizes are won by stories about men.

"According to 2015 research from author Nicola Griffith, the majority of the significant literary prizes are awarded to works written from a male perspective," said Caroline Bowler, representing the newly announcedHalf the World Global Literati Award.

Griffith, author of The Blue Place and Hild, analyzed 15 years' worth of results of major literary prizes, including the Pulitzer and Man Booker Prizes. She found that many of the winning books were written from a male character's perspective. For instance, results of the Pulitzer Prize from 2000 to 2015 show that eight out of 15 of the winning books were by men about men or boys, three were by women about men or boys, three were by women about both genders, one was by a man about an intersex individual and none were about women.

The new award hopes to address that gender gap.

"The Half the World Global Literati Award is specifically designed to put the spotlight on real female characters and positively impact how women are represented in contemporary writing," said Bowler in a news release.

Read more about it here.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Good news - it supports genre fiction, and mentions SFF specifically!

Bad news - it only appears to be for Canada.

Canadians of any gender are eligible to enter the new prize, which is open for submissions until June 8.

 

[ratsy]

Easy. I just need to finish Sleepy Grove and send it in 5 weeks from now!

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Half the World Global Literati Award

Canada must be a big place

Well, I hope the results are more readable and uplifting than many other "Literary" fiction awards.

They'd not feel so bad though, if they checked out who the protagonists or main characters are in books people actually buy.

 

[MWagner]

What a strange premise for an award. Most literary fiction in Canada may have male protagonists, but most readers of literary fiction (by a wide margin) are women. So I'm not sure what problem the award is trying to solve. One could as easily justify an award to address the egregious gender disparity in readers by encouraging more men to read literary fiction.

 

[The Judge]

As far as I can see, the problem it's trying to solve is a lack of female protagonists in books which win these prizes.** Whether the problem arises because too few people write women protagonists, too few agents/publishers put forward books with female protagonists, or too many prize-giving committees ignore books which have female protagonists, I've no idea. We might as well start at the beginning, though, and encourage people to write women into good roles in good books in the first place.

The fact women do read books in which men take the usual major role is no reason to imply there is no need for anything to be done. If there's only one dish on the menu, it's hardly surprising if people eat it. But yes, do please encourage men to read literary fiction. Why don't you start a thread putting forward suggestions as to how that gender imbalance can be corrected.


** I imagine it's different as far as awards for romance novels are concerned, but it would be nice to move female leads out of that particular ghetto.

 

[ratsy]

My book Sleepy Grove does feature a strong female protagonist, and I hope to get back to this book at some point. My new one is first person POV from a man's point, but it does have a couple a$#-kicking females characters in it. The MC is an accountant, so he needs some strong women to help him save the world!

 

[Brian G Turner]

What a strange premise for an award.

Not really. But I'll thank everyone to keep discussion of socio-politics out of this thread, though. It's an award - discuss that.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

But I'll thank everyone to keep discussion of socio-politics out of this thread, though. It's an award - discuss that

Isn't the whole point of the award, the "socio-politics" issues? How can it be discussed in isolation?
Not that I object to it. IMO I see no issue with it, or their decision to have only Canadian writers. There are all kinds of awards.

 

[Half the World Award]

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for the interest in the award. One small thing, the award is open to submissions from anywhere in the world and the author can be any gender. It's only the main protagonist that is to be female.

Thanks very much!

 

[Mad Alice]

Half The World Global Literati Award

Here is the actual awards page.

 

[David Evil Overlord]

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for the interest in the award. One small thing, the award is open to submissions from anywhere in the world and the author can be any gender. It's only the main protagonist that is to be female.

Thanks very much!

Thanks, that answers all the questions I had.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for the interest in the award. One small thing, the award is open to submissions from anywhere in the world and the author can be any gender. It's only the main protagonist that is to be female.

Thanks very much!

Thanks for letting us know, and great news that it's global!

 

[The Bluestocking]

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for the interest in the award. One small thing, the award is open to submissions from anywhere in the world and the author can be any gender. It's only the main protagonist that is to be female.

Thanks very much!

Cue: half of the writers on Chrons rushing off to polish/finish whatever WIP they are working on that has awesome female protagonists