A.M. Homes wins 2013 Women’s Prize for Fiction

 19.30, London, 5^th June 2013 – American author A.M. Homes has won the 2013 Women’s Prize for Fiction with her sixth novel May We Be Forgiven (Granta).

2013 marks the eighteenth year of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, known from 1996 to 2012 as the Orange Prize for Fiction, which celebrates excellence, originality and accessibility in women’s writing from throughout the world.

At an awards ceremony at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London – hosted by Chair of the Women’s Prize for Fiction board, Kate Mosse – the 2013 Chair of Judges, Miranda Richardson, presented the author with the £30,000 prize and the ‘Bessie’, a limited edition bronze figurine.  Both are anonymously endowed.

 Miranda Richardson, Chair of Judges, said: “Our 2013 shortlist was exceptionally strong and our judges’ meeting was long and passionately argued, but in the end we agreed that May we be Forgiven is a dazzling, original, viscerally funny black comedy – a subversion of the American dream. This is a book we want to read again and give to our friends.”

The Women’s Prize for Fiction was set up in 1996 to celebrate and promote fiction written by women throughout the world to the widest range of readers possible. The Women’s Prize is awarded to the best novel of the year written in English by a woman.

The judges for the 2013 Women’s Prize for Fiction are:

Miranda Richardson, (Chair), Actor

Razia Iqbal, BBC Broadcaster and Journalist

Rachel Johnson, Author, Editor and Journalist

Jojo Moyes, Author

Natasha Walter, Feminist Writer and Human Rights Activist

A.M. Homes will be joining Women’s Prize co-founder and best-selling novelist Kate Mosse in a Google+ hangout at 3pm on Thursday 6th June. You can join the discussion here.

A.M. Homes

A.M. Homes is the author of two collections of short stories, Things You Should Know and The Safety of Objects, the novels Music for Torching, The End of Alice, In a Country of Mothers, Jack and the bestselling This Book Will Save Your Life, and the highly acclaimed memoir, The Mistress’s Daughter, all published by Granta Books. She is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and writes frequently on arts and culture for numerous magazines and newspapers. She wrote and produced for the television series The L Word and is currently developing a major US TV series for HBO called The Hamptons. She lives in New York City.

May We Be Forgiven

Harry has spent a lifetime watching his younger brother, George – a taller, smarter and more successful high-flying TV executive – acquire a covetable wife, two kids and a beautiful home. But Harry, a historian and Nixon scholar, also knows George has a murderous temper, and when George loses control the result is an act so shocking that both brothers are hurled into entirely new lives, in which they both must seek absolution.

Known as the Orange Prize for Fiction between 1996 and 2012, previous winners include Madeline Miller for The Song of Achilles (2012),  Téa Obreht for The Tiger’s Wife (2011), Barbara Kingsolver for The Lacuna (2010), Marilynne Robinson for Home (2009), Rose Tremain for The Road Home (2008), Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for Half of a Yellow Sun (2007), Zadie Smith for On Beauty (2006),  Lionel Shriver for We Need to Talk About Kevin (2005), Andrea Levy for Small Island (2004), Valerie Martin for Property (2003), Ann Patchett for Bel Canto (2002), Kate Grenville for The Idea of Perfection (2001), Linda Grant for When I Lived in Modern Times (2000), Suzanne Berne for A Crime in the Neighbourhood (1999), Carol Shields for Larry’s Party (1998), Anne Michaels for Fugitive Pieces (1997), and Helen Dunmore for A Spell of Winter (1996).

The awards took place in The Clore Ballroom of the Royal Festival Hall, central London.  In addition to the Women’s Prize for Fiction winner announcement, aspiring novelist Susan Wallman was named as the winner of the Women’s Prize/Grazia First Chapter Competition for unpublished writers.

Women’s Prize for Fiction announces new headline sponsor

This week the Women’s Prize for Fiction also announced a new three-year partnership with Baileys, the world’s first cream liqueur. From 2014 the prize will be known as the ‘Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction’.

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Notes to Editors

Women’s Prize for Fiction 2013

• The Women’s Prize for Fiction 2013 was known as the Orange Prize for Fiction between 1996 and 2012.
• For 2013, the Women’s Prize is being funded by a group of individual and company donors including Bilbary, The Book People,  Bob & Co, Cherie Blair, Fanny Blake, Bloomberg, Richard & Elena Bridges, Elizabeth Buchan, Christopher Foyle, Jill Green, Martha Lane Fox CBE, Lansons Communications, Joanna Trollope OBE, Sue Woodford-Hollick and others who wish to remain anonymous.
• The Women’s Prize for Fiction 2013 has a new partnership with Google for this year. Google are working with the organisers on a number of new initiatives which will support the prize’s ambition of reaching a wider, international audience.  Google’s platforms such as Google+ and YouTube, are helping to connect authors and judges with a large online audience from around the world.
• WPF 2013 is also continuing its successful, long-term partnerships with Southbank Centre, Grazia magazine, The Reading Agency and Book Trust, who have administered the Prize since 1996.
• The Prize’s patrons are; Dame Gillian Beer DBE, Professor Lisa Jardine CBE, Jude Kelly OBE, Helena Kennedy Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws QC FRSA, Sue MacGregor CBE, Dame Jenni Murray DBE, Shami Chakrabarti CBE, Lola Young, Baroness Young of Hornsey OBE, Rosie Boycott, Liz Calder, Fi Glover, Daisy Goodwin, Muriel Gray, Bettany Hughes, Paula Kahn, Martha Kearney, Kirsty Lang, Sheena McDonald, Penny Perrick, Dame Gail Rebuck DBE, Gillian Shephard, Baroness Shephard of Northwold, Ahdaf Soueif, Sandi Toksvig, Polly Toynbee and Joanna Trollope OBE.
• The Prize’s board comprises of Kate Mosse (Chair), Clare Alexander, Felicity Blunt, Jane Gregory (Company Secretary), Harriet Hastings (Managing Director), Karen Jones, Martha Lane Fox CBE, Nicola Mendelsohn, Joanna Prior, Susan Sandon and Carole Welch.