A love letter to the Women’s Prize

At the prizegiving celebration, there were other kindred spirits too – some of the literary heroes in whose brains those distant worlds we’d honoured in previous years were created. We gushed over Naomi Alderman’s The Power, a book which excited and riled me so much that we had an emergency London Book Club session to discuss it immediately over a huge shared steak at the Draper’s Arms and imagined a seismic power shift that put women in charge. 

I have spent half of my adult life with these women’s stories. Through my work, I’ve been lucky enough to call many of them friends. Watching Rachel win, I cried, remembering when I was caught in a bureaucratic doom cycle between my NHS specialist and GP, and she took the time to offer me the language and studies that would allow me to advocate for myself. Her generosity directly impacted my hands and my ability to type this. 

In 2024, award-winning comedian, actor and writer Cariad Lloyd’s You Are Not Alone was my most purchased book. I have multiple copies in my home that I send to those in my life facing monstrous grief, and are not sure how to navigate their own lives in their new normal. 

Unfortunately, I did not speak to Cariad, but instead, I met Edel Coffey and Sarah Rose Gregory. We spoke about grief and recognising ourselves as real and valid writers – not to mention our incredible garden party-specific outfits. It turns out there is no need for small talk when you are among people who feel as deeply about women’s stories as you do, it’s a given.

I thanked Nussaibah Younis for writing Fundamentally and for making my best friend obnoxiously howl over the word “doppelbanger” during a dinner at Dishoom. When I heard that Younis laughed when she wrote it, it made me giddy. On my first ever date with a woman recently, I arrived with treats for her cat and my hardback copy of Younis’s novel to share with her. I am nothing if not an overachiever, and my love language is, and always will be, books. 

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For the last ten years, I’ve read the entire shortlists of the Women’s Prize for Fiction and often the entire back catalogues of the women nominated. In fact, I was visibly annoyed realising how incredible Younis’s debut novel was, only to discover that there were no other books of hers to laud over – until she writes the next one.  

Reading one book connects you, but sharing that book indicates a level of care that can commemorate a chance meeting or start a friendship or love affair. Likewise, meeting one woman who has been part of the Women’s Prize is an invisible thread to every woman who has been influenced by the stories it has brought into our lives. If you bought a book because of a Women’s Prize sticker and had a Bailey’s while reading, you are one of my people. 

At the helm, you have Kate Mosse, who has made it her life’s work (aside from being a prolific author herself) to make sure women’s stories are given the platform they deserve. In 30 years, 16 million women have been touched by the Women’s Prize.

For three decades, the award has been facilitating women storytellers meeting their readers on the page and in doing so has radically changed the publishing world and the lives of those writers, readers and little girls sitting in the stacks imagining one day that their story will reach little girls just like them. 

When I was their age, Anne of Green Gables was my first book with chapters. My mother and I took turns reading a chapter each in her bed until neither of us could keep our eyes open and her endless bookshelves and ‘to read next’ piles in every room installed a love of literature in me long before adolescence.

Later in life, the women I would come to love the most also adored Anne as a child. These same women would always have a book in their bag and likely wish they were cuddled up with their favourite animal and alone with whatever they were currently reading.  

These are my women. The bookworms, the swots, and the teachers’ pets who found written stories and distant worlds more alluring than the real ones we faced daily. These are the women who were unable to see the distance between themselves and the women on the page. Those stories taught us friendship, they taught us empathy, and they taught us to rage and fight back.

I have cried, laughed and despaired because of these women’s wisdom and failures. In most cases, they will never know that their generosity, prose and dedication to sharing stories have kept me alive, fighting, and at the core hopeful. They will never know the impact or intimacy of my personal experience with their work, but for 30 years, the Women’s Prize has been my favourite and most trusted matchmaker, both on the page and in reality.

Jamie Klingler is co-founder of Reclaim These Streets and founder of London Book Club