RTL Group | London, 11/12/2019

Fremantle Announces Judges For ‘Women’s Prize for Fiction’

Since this year, Fremantle has been one of the three main sponsors of the £30,000 Women’s Prize for Fiction. The production company has now announced the new judging panel for the prestigious British literature prize, which is awarded exclusively to women writers. Martha Lane Fox will chair the judging panel.

In 2020 a somewhat unusual literary prize will be 25 years old: Britain’s “Women’s Prize for Fiction.” At £30,000 pounds, it is comparatively well endowed, and is awarded exclusively to female authors. And one of its three main sponsors since this year has been the RTL Group production arm Fremantle. With a view to the 25th anniversary of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, Fremantle has now introduced the judging panel for 2020. They include entrepreneur and philanthropist Martha Lane Fox; writer and activist Scarlett Curtis; Melanie Eusebe, founder of the Black British Business Award; author and comedian Viv Groskop; and Paula Hawkins, an internationally bestselling author on the Penguin Random House UK roster.

Lane Fox says she feels honored to be chairing the judging panel for this “wonderful prize” alongside such an inspiring group of women. She says she will always be grateful to the Prize for exposing her to some of the most talented female writing talent, and looks forward to passionate discussions about the nominated books. The timetable for the Women’s Prize for Fiction is also set: The longlist will be announced on March 3, 2020 and the shortlist on April 22. The winner will then be announced on June 3. The nominated books must have been published in English, but in any country of the world, between April 1, 2019 and March 31, 2020. And they may only be written by women. This has been the case since the award was founded in 1996 in protest at the fact that the previous year, not a single woman had been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Over the past 25 years, Penguin Random House authors have repeatedly won the prestigious prize, including Zadie Smith, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Kamila Shamsie.