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The Women's Prize for Fiction 2025 shortlist has been announced – just in time for tote bag and tinnies season. What's better than sitting in the sun with a book? Sitting in the sun with a book written by a woman, of course. And this year, we're spoiled for choice.
The prize, now in its 30th year, champions “excellence, originality and accessibility” in women’s writing, and has previously been won by the likes of V. V. Ganeshananthan, for Brotherless Night; Barbara Kingsolver, for Demon Copperhead, and Tayari Jones, for An American Marriage. Previous awardees also include Maggie O'Farrell, Madeline Miller, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
This year's shortlist features “multi-generational perspectives and a strong showing of debuts, with four of the six books written by new voices,” and, according to the official press release, queer relationships and sexual re-awakenings through life are a prominent theme. Excellent news.
Kit de Waal, author and Chair of Judges for the prize, praised the shortlisted books for celebrating “rich, multi-layered narratives that will surprise, move and delight the reader, all drawing on, in different ways, the importance of human connection.” She was joined on the judging panel by Deborah Joseph, former European Editorial Director of GLAMOUR; novelist Diana Evans; and journalist and mental-health campaigner, Bryony Gordon.
The Women's Prize for Fiction 2025 shortlist in full:
Good Girl by Aria Aber
All Fours by Miranda July
The Persians by Sanam Mahloudji
Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Stout
The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden
Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis
The winner of the 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction will be announced on Thursday, 12 June 2025, at the Women’s Prize Trust’s summer party in central London, along with the winner of the 2025 Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction.
For more from Glamour UK's Lucy Morgan, follow her on Instagram @lucyalexxandra.
