Women’s Prize for Fiction

The Longlist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction has been announced and it’s an exciting list with a mixture of well known and debut authors. I’m particularly looking forward to reading ‘The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock’ and ‘Three Things about Elsie’. Which titles are going on your reading list?

From the Guardian:

From murderers to mermaids, the “whole wealth of experience” features on the longlist for the 2018 Women’s prize for fiction, according to chair of judges Sarah Sands, giving the lie to “that stereotype of women’s fiction”.

The 16-strong longlist for the £30,000 award for “excellence, originality and accessibility in writing by women in English from throughout the world”, was announced on Thursday. The award, previously known as the Baileys prize, places two major names, Pulitzer winner Jennifer Egan and Booker winner Arundhati Roy, up against six debuts. The latter include Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, which won the Costa first novel award, and Imogen Hermes Gowar’s The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock, a tale set in Georgian London in which a mermaid is captured.

Topics range from Nicola Barker’s H(a)ppy, set in the far future in an apparent utopia, to Meena Kandasamy’s portrait of a violent marriage, When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife, and Sarah Schmidt’s reimagining of the Lizzie Borden murders, See What I Have Done. 

“What strikes me is the range and the boldness of it – the true diversity of subject as well as authors. You’ve got mermaids and murderesses, which has got to be good,” said chair of the judges Sands, editor of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “You feel women could deal with any subject; they can take on big themes. It doesn’t feel like a partial list, where you think you need the men to make up the world. The world is really well covered in this list.”

We  have more than half of the titles in stock already and if there is one you would like to read, place a request and we will buy it.  The full list is

(A)PPY by Nicola Barker
The Idiot by Elif Batuman
Three Things About Elsie by Joanna Cannon
Miss Burma by Charmaine Craig
Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan
The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar
Sight by Jessie Greengrass
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife by Meena Kandasamy
Elmet by Fiona Mozley
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy
See What I Have Done by Sarah Schmidt
A Boy in Winter by Rachel Seiffert
Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie
The Trick to Time by Kit de Waal
Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

 

International Women’s Day

Thursday 8 March is International Women’s day

To celebrate, a number of activities will be taking place in Wakefield One from 10am – 3pm. This year marks 100 years since women were able to vote. Let’s celebrate the achievements of all the inspirational women that fought to make this happen.

Between 10am – 2pm the Electoral Services team is holding a voter registration event.

From 2 – 3pm people from Occupational Health will be promoting the Well Women Centre in Wakefield. They will be promoting the centre and offering advice and support around Women’s wellbeing – anyone can call in and have a chat.

There will also be:

• Poets in Poll Booths – ask a poet to write and perform a poem especially for you
• Display’s in the Museum about the first secret ballot held in Pontefract
• From 10.10am – 11.50am there will be spoken word performances by the Forgotten Women of Wakefield
• Rachel Reeves MP will deliver a talk in the library learning zone at 12.15pm about the life of Alice Bacon, the first female MP from Yorkshire
• At 1pm – the unveiling of a blue plaque dedicated to Alice Bacon