Author Bernardine Evaristo is using the £100,000 she won through the Women’s prize outstanding contribution award to fund a new prize for “pioneering” British female writers over 60.
The RSL Pioneer prize – administered by the Royal Society of Literature, of which Evaristo is president – will award £10,000 to 10 living writers over the next decade. The prize will honour women across all genres who “have been trailblazers in their field, especially in the past when it was more difficult for women to have successful careers as writers”, said the RSL.
The inaugural winner is 91-year-old Maureen Duffy, a poet, playwright, novelist, nonfiction writer and activist .
Duffy found out she had won the prize when Evaristo visited her at home earlier this month. “I hope this encourages writers to keep on writing, because it is a hard thing to support yourself as a writer in this country,” she said.
Asked by Evaristo how it felt to be acknowledged as a pioneer, Duffy said “it’s a funny old thing. I suppose I’ll get used to it. But at the moment it seems extraordinary, really.”
Evaristo was announced as the Women’s prize outstanding contribution winner in June. The one-off prize, funded by Bukhman Philanthropies, was awarded to Evaristo based on her body of work, which includes the 2019 Booker winner Girl, Woman, Other, as well as her “unwavering dedication to uplifting under-represented voices across the cultural landscape”.
“It felt right that I should share this substantial and unexpected windfall with other older women writers as a way to acknowledge their pioneer spirits and achievements,” said Evaristo. “It’s very easy to forget the feminist struggles of the past and the intrepid women who paved the way for successive generations, and it’s important to celebrate our trailblazers while they are still around to enjoy it.”
“It’s no secret that older women writers tend to be overlooked, while older male writers often enjoy substantial careers until they topple over into their graves,” she wrote in the Observer on Sunday. “While Duffy has sadly slipped from view of late […] she deserves to be better known to younger generations.”
Each year over the next decade, a woman writer will be chosen by a jury to receive an award and cash prize of £10,000, to be be administered by the Royal Society of Literature. This year, however, as Evaristo winds down from her tenure as President of the RSL, she is doing the choosing herself.
While Evaristo herself chose Duffy – in a decision she described as a “no-brainer” – for the inaugural prize, future years of the award will focus on a particular literary genre, and be judged by specialists in the field, including agents, publishers, critics, and writers. Each winner will be asked to spotlight a “deceased and forgotten” female writer who inspired them when they were starting out, as well as three emerging writers.
Duffy has written more than 60 works across a range of genres. She won her first poetry competition aged 17, and completed her first play while studying English at King’s College London. In the late 1950s, she worked as a schoolteacher, before turning to writing full-time after being commissioned to produce a screenplay by Granada Television.
“When I conceived of the prize, Maureen Duffy was always foremost in my mind as the recipient because she is a true trailblazer in every sense of the word,” said Evaristo. “Raised in a working-class, single-parent family, she has had a prodigious, prolific and varied career as a brilliant, imaginative and groundbreaking writer since the early 1960s, as well as being an advocate for writers. She was instrumental in campaigning for writers’ licensing rights, which led to the formation of the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society.”
Duffy’s win will be marked at an event at the British Library, London, on 30 November.