A photo of the planet Earth inspired by Samantha Harvey’s novel “Orbital,”
Winner of the 2024 Booker Prize Award.
Photo courtesy of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Flickr
The Booker Prize is a historic award, granted to what the judges deem to be the best novel written in English and published in the UK. Any author is eligible for the award, as long as they meet the writing and publishing requirements.
The Booker Prize was first given out in 1969, and since then, 36 men and 19 women have won the award. This year’s nominees had the most women in the award’s history, featuring five women out of the six nominees who were shortlisted for the prize.
The women nominated included Samantha Harvey for her novel “Orbital,” Rachel Kushner’s “Creation Lake,” and “Held” by Anne Micheals; as well as “Stone Yard Devotional” by Charlotte Wood, and “The Safekeep” by Yael van der Wouden.
The novels span a variety of genres, and the list of shortlisted authors this year follows a list dominated by men in 2023.
Not only did this year’s shortlisted authors list make history, but the winner, Samantha Harvey, is the first woman since 2019 to win the Booker Prize. Notably, her novel is also the second shortest book to ever win the award. “Orbital” also had more sales than the past three Booker Prize winners combined had sold until awarded at their respective ceremonies.
Harvey follows on from the historic success of women in 2019 when Margaret Atwood and Bernadine Evaristo both won the Booker Prize. 2019 set records for both authors: Atwood became the second author to ever win the award twice with her novel “The Testaments,” and Evaristo became the first black woman to ever win the Booker Prize with her novel “Girl, Woman, Other.”
The tides have been shifting in the publishing world over the past decade, not only in the quantity of books being published every year but also a shift in how many women are now contributing to the creative industry of book publishing.
In a paper by Joel Waldfogel that was published in 2023, the economist found that the number of titles published by women increased by 20% in the 1970s to over 50% by 2020.
Waldfogel suggests that the rise of women in the industry can be because authorship is a solo endeavor, so women are at less of a disadvantage due to social biases or discrimination. Another possible explanation is that women make up a majority of readers compared to men.
Riane Williams – an FSU sophomore, Writing Club President, and author of the novel “Celest: Every Day is Closer to the End” – gave several reasons why she believes women may be making an inroads in the industry.
Williams said, “In previous years, women were seen as unfit to write and most female-written works were not given the recognition they deserved,” which caused “...women authors and authors that otherwise had feminine-sounding names to write under more male-sounding pen names.”
However, Williams hypothesized that “...As time passed, more female writers had huge success in their writing careers and began to be recognized as female writers,” and subsequently, “...as more female writers arose, so did aspiring female authors.”
Williams also described the other space of discrimination women face, which is the traditional publishing world. “First-time authors that otherwise do not have an established following, are less likely to be picked up by publishing houses and publishing agents,” Williams said.
“I hypothesize that it has to do with the barriers women have faced to write and publish their works at all.”
No matter the reason behind the phenomenon, the rise of female authors is amplifying women’s voices, representing female readers all across the United States.
“Women’s voices are needed in the book industry for the same reasons that voices of all demographics are needed: we all give different perspectives,” Williams said. Women authors give voice to female readers across the United States to speak out against discrimination and the oppression of a patriarchal society.
The amplification of female voices is a powerful tool of literature: it can express a desire on behalf of women in the United States for change. “Women’s literature is not only able to give perspective in these instances, it is able to change the trajectory of women’s universal treatment,” Williams said.
Literature not only can empower women’s voices but can amplify those of other oppressed groups. Williams said, “Women being included in more recognized and published literature helps open the gate for other oppressed groups to also be heard,” and continued on the subject, “...generally, as one oppressed group is given more power, others tend to follow suit.”
To conclude, Williams said, “I hope to see more female writers win The Booker Prize in the future, and I give a huge congratulations to all of this year’s winners!”
Could Harvey’s win signal a change in the turning tides of the literary community? Women winning such monumental awards as The Booker Prize sets an important and inspiring example for published and aspiring female authors to look up to.
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