Winners Lyse Doucet (left) and Virginia Evans at the Women’s Prize awards ceremony in London, June 11, 2026.
| Photo Credit: AP
American novelist Virginia Evans won the Women’s Prize for Fiction on June 11 with The Correspondent, a word-of-mouth bestseller that made her a literary star after seven unpublished novels.Canadian journalist Lyse Doucet won the Women’s Prize for Nonfiction with The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A People’s History of Afghanistan.Read a review of The Correspondent by Virginia EvansBoth prizes come with a GBP 30,000 ($40,000) purse and are open to female English-language writers from any country.Evans wrote fiction for two decades before writing The Correspondent during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it was released quietly in 2025. A story told through years’ worth of letters from retired lawyer Sybil Van Antwerp to friends, family and famous writers, it gradually climbed bestseller lists and became a book club favourite. A film adaptation starring Jane Fonda is in the works.
Women’s Prize for Fiction 2026 winner Virginia Evans with her book ‘The Correspondent’.
| Photo Credit:
