BREAKING BARRIERS: Patricia Evangelista Represents the Philippines in Women’s Prize for Nonfiction

In a bid to challenge the male-dominated landscape of nonfiction literature, the inaugural Women’s Prize for Nonfiction has emerged as a beacon of change. Spearheaded by British historian Suzannah Lipscomb, this groundbreaking prize aims to amplify the voices of female authors in a genre often overshadowed by male counterparts. Highlighting the disparity in nonfiction publishing, Lipscomb emphasized the need to bridge the “authority gap,” where women authors often receive less recognition and exposure than their male counterparts. With only 26.5% of nonfiction books reviewed in Britain's newspapers authored by women, the Women's Prize for Nonfiction seeks to address this imbalance head-on. The prize’s longlist features an eclectic array of works from authors hailing from various corners of the globe, including the Philippines. Notably, journalist Patricia Evangelista’s Some People Need Killing offers a poignant exploration of the Philippines’ drug war, adding a crucial perspective to the literary landscape. As we await the announcement of the six finalists on March 27th, let us celebrate the diversity and power of women's voices in nonfiction literature. Stay tuned for further updates on this groundbreaking literary prize. The Women’s Prize for Nonfiction hopes to change that. “Nonfiction is still perceived to some extent as a man’s game,” said British historian Suzannah Lipscomb, who is chairing the judging panel for the inaugural edition of the UK-based prize. The judges announced a list of 16 contenders for the £30,000 ($38,000) award on Thursday. An offshoot of the 28-year-old Women’s Prize for Fiction, whose past winners include Zadie Smith, Tayari Jones and Barbara Kingsolver, the new prize is open to female English-language writers from any country in any nonfiction genre. Lipscomb noted that in 2022, only 26.5% of nonfiction books reviewed in Britain’s newspapers were by women, and male writers dominated established nonfiction writing prizes. “In all the ways that we recognize expertise and authority — giving it exposure, giving it attention, sales, money earned by the authors — women were not featuring as highly as their male counterparts,” she said. “So I think that we do still need to close what [journalist] Mary Ann Sieghart called the authority gap. And that’s why this prize is needed.” The company Nielsen Book Research found in 2019 that women bought 59% of all the books sold in the UK, but men accounted for just over half of adult nonfiction purchases. Authors from the United States, Australia, Canada, India, Jamaica, the Philippines and the UK are on the prize longlist, chosen from 120 books submitted by publishers. They include author-activist Naomi Klein ’s plunge into online misinformation, Doppleganger, and journalist Patricia Evangelista’s Some People Need Killing, a searing investigation of the Philippines’ drug war. There are works by leading academics and books on science and technology, including Cat Bohannon’s Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution and Madhumita Murgia’s Code-Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI. The list spans genres including travelogue (Alice Albinia’s The Britannias: An Island Quest), history (Leah Redmond Chang’s Renaissance study Young Queens), biography (Anna Funder’s Wifedom: Mrs. Orwell’s Invisible Life) and autobiography (Safiya Sinclair’s How to Say Babylon: A Jamaican Memoir). Asked what unites the disparate roster, Lipscomb quotes a line from Funder’s book: “The project of good writing is to reveal to us the world we thought we knew.” “There is a trend towards redressing wrongs, telling untold stories, exposing truths, revealing hypocrisies,” she said. “That sense of making good comes out of them.” Six finalists for the nonfiction award will be announced on March 27, and the winner will be unveiled at a ceremony in London on June 13.