Discovering Great New Writers–Meet the Womens Prize "Discoveries"

 

Right now I'm furiously reading The Women's Prize 2025 shortlist; six smashing novels by women published last year.  So far, I've only finished one; BIRDING by Rose Ruane, and I loved it, I genuinely could not put it down. This didn’t surprise me; one of aims of the prize is to chose high excellence in writing, but also readable, approachable stories. This allows it to stand apart from other prizes, where winnering novels may be dense, even arcane and seem to deliberately impenetrable. I think you can be profound and sibylline without trying to drown your reader in words. 

Some of the winners remain my favourite novels.

Maggie O'Farrel won in 2020 with Hamnet,
one of my favourite winners. 

The Women’s Prize has been running since 1994, annually awarding a female author of any nationality for the best original full-length novel written in English. Kate Mosse founded the prize, and has always responded to the criticism that women and men should compete directly, by saying… ‘It’s not about taking the spotlight away from the brilliant male writers, it’s about adding the women in.’ In 2023 it was announced that a sister prize, the Women's Prize for Non-Fiction, would be awarded for the first time in 2024, with a £30,000 prize.

And now, the Women’s Prize is also sponsoring new female writers with their new enterprise, ‘Discoveries’, which aims to seek out, inspire and support writers from early writing to long-term careers, with writer development programmes, toolkits, free events and online community create pathways.

Over 80% of entrants to the Discoveries development programme said they felt inspired to take steps towards achieving their writing goals and had gained more knowledge on the publishing industry.

This year, alongside those shortlisted for the main prize, six new writers have been chosen as Discoveries, having finished their novels. They are…

Shaiyra Devi, The Persistence of Gravity

Jac Felipez, A Long Ways from Home

Rosie Rowell, Down by the Stryth

Lauren Van Schaik, Seven Sweet Nothings

Muti’ah Badruddeen, A Bowl of River Water

Sophie Black, The Pass

The Women's Prize interviewed each one and I found so much to honour and to concur with each new writer. A lot of them started, as I did, very young. 

Shaiyra Devi says...I began writing fiction as soon I learned to write, filling a notepad with 1-page stories from the age of 5. At 10, I promised myself I’d write a book, and finished Diamonds & Daggers, an adventure fantasy novel, before 13…
Jac Felipez says...I

have been writing, in different ways, my whole life. From the first story my English teacher praised in front of the class to the novel-in progress..

.          Rosie Rowell says...I fell in love with writing from the moment I learned how to read. 

Lauren Van Schaik says...before I could hold a pen I tyrannically dictated stories to my parents.

And their responses to finding out they were shortlisted were amazing;

Muti'ah Badruddeen was...Breathless. I mean that literally. I screamed so much, I became breathless. I have a weak heart, and I don’t think it has stopped racing since I opened the email. I’m usually more on the self contained end of expression but Discoveries has unleashed the inner screamer I never knew...

Shaiyra Devi was...beyond ecstatic, totally over the moon! 

Lauren Van Schaik was...really honoured that the judges see the promise in this project. I’ve had so much fun writing it and can’t wait to share it even more widely.

Can they offer advice? Sophie Black suggests...To not get bogged down in details and research when you really need to just write – you can look at specifics when you’re editing. It worked like a charm because I’m not even 100% decided on my characters’ names – I only know how they feel and how they’d behave. 

What inspired them? For Jac Felipez...visiting the Lubaina Himid retrospective at Tate Modern in 2022...The exhibition prompted me to revisit the 1980s, a decade characterised by uprisings, radical activism, and vibrant artistic expression. Felipez is writing a contemporary story that connects to the 1980s...

For Saiyra Devi it was... The seed for my current novel sprouted in a fiction writing workshop in my final year of college, and it has consumed me ever since...

Rosie Rowell's idea came from TikTok, admitting...doomscrolling finally pays off!... 

  Muti'ah Badruddeen started A Bowl of River Water by writing about her grandmother's life.

...She was an incredible woman...But the more I wrote, the bigger it got away from the details of her life; coming to encompass, instead, the idea of women who, despite dominant narratives about the period and cultural context, fought in their own way to subvert societal norms that infringed on their autonomy and personhood.  

Lauren Van Schaik's story Seven Sweet Nothings was inspired by a true story... polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs taking his favourite wives to Disney...while he was a federal fugitive. What happens when sheltered wives are removed from the compound and dropped into our world — or rather, the sanitised, perpetually happy theme park pastiche of it?

Reading about their committments to their writing, their love of fiction, and the inspirations behind the stories was very reassuring. You can find more about them at https://womensprize.com/meet-the-2025-discoveries-shortlistees/