The Women’s Prize for Fiction is the UK’s most prestigious annual book award celebrating and honouring fiction written by women. Every year, a panel of five women – all passionate readers and at the top of their respective professions – choose the winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction. One of this year’s judges, author Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ (A Spell of Good Things) Anne Enright who’s novel The Wren, The Wren is shortisted in this year’s Prize. Both authors are joined by Cathy Rentzenbrink to talk about the prize’s impact and celebrate the work it has championed.
Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ is an award-winning novelist whose debut, Stay with Me, was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2017, and follow-up, A Spell of Good Things, was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2023. Born in Lagos, Nigeria, Ayọ̀bámi, studied at Obafemi Awolowo University, earning degrees in Literature. She went on to study Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, where she now teaches. In 2017, Ayọ̀bámi won The Future Awards Africa Prize for Arts and Culture.
Anne Enright, who lives and works in Dublin, has published eight novels including The Gathering, which was the Irish Novel of the Year and won the 2007 Man Booker Prize, The Forgotten Waltz, which was awarded the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and The Green Road, which won the Irish Novel of the Year and the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award. She has also published three collections of stories, collected as Yesterday’s Weather and one non-fiction title, Making Babies. Her work has been nominated for the Women’s Prize four times before this 2024 shortlisting. From 2015 to 2018 she was the inaugural Laureate for Irish Fiction.
