2026 Women's Prize Book Awards Fiction & Nonfiction Winners

Sep 11, 2026

Previously known as the Orange Prize for Fiction, The Women’s Prize is one of the most prestigious book awards for female authors. The charitable organization behind the prize is dedicated to being a champion for women’s writing. In addition to handing out annual awards for the best fiction and nonfiction works, the organization donates thousands of books to women in need and offers a variety of resources for aspiring writers.

The Women’s Prize Trust was founded by author and playwright Kate Mosse in the United Kingdom back in the early ‘90s. Mosse met with booksellers, publishers, literary agents, journalists and more after noting that not a single female author was nominated for the legendary Booker Prize, despite women authoring roughly 60% of novels and driving the majority of book sales.

Despite some controversy and backlash as well as several name changes, The Women’s Prize has been going strong for 30 years. Helen Dunmore was the first author to win the prize for her book A Spell of Winter in 1996. The organization has been handing out modernist trophies known as The Bessie ever since.

Let’s take a quick look at this year’s winners and finalists for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and Non-Fiction.

2026 Women’s Prize Award Finalists for Fiction

The Correspondent (winner)

by Virginia Evans

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - OVER 2 MILLION COPIES SOLD - Discover the word-of-mouth hit hailed by Ann Patchett as "A cause for celebration"--an intimate novel about the transformative power of the written word and the beauty of slowing down to reconnect with the people we love.

"Imagine, the letters one has sent out into the world, the letters received back in turn, are like the pieces of a magnificent puzzle. ... Isn't there something wonderful in that, to think that a story of one's life is preserved in some way, that this very letter may one day mean something, even if it is a very small thing, to someone?"

Filled with knowledge that only comes from a life fully lived, The Correspondent is a gem of a novel about the power of finding solace in literature and connection with people we might never meet in person. It is about the hubris of youth and the wisdom of old age, and the mistakes and acts of kindness that occur during a lifetime.

Sybil Van Antwerp has throughout her life used letters to make sense of the world and her place in it. Most mornings, around half past ten, Sybil sits down to write letters--to her brother, to her best friend, to the president of the university who will not allow her to audit a class she desperately wants to take, to Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry to tell them what she thinks of their latest books, and to one person to whom she writes often yet never sends the letter.

Sybil expects her world to go on as it always has--a mother, grandmother, wife, divorcee, distinguished lawyer, she has lived a very full life. But when letters from someone in her past force her to examine one of the most painful periods of her life, she realizes that the letter she has been writing over the years needs to be read and that she cannot move forward until she finds it in her heart to offer forgiveness.

Sybil Van Antwerp's life of letters might be "a very small thing," but she also might be one of the most memorable characters you will ever read.

The Mercy Step

by Marcia Hutchinson

Kingfisher

by Patricia A McKillip

Dominion

by C. J. Sansom

Heart the Lover

by Lily King

Flashlight

by Susan Choi

2026 Women’s Prize Award Nonfiction Winner and Shortlist

The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A People's History of Afghanistan (winner)

by Lyse Doucet

The story of a hotel. The story of a nation.

When the Inter-Continental Kabul opened in 1969, Afghanistan's first luxury hotel symbolised a dream of a modernising country connected to the world.

More than 50 years on, the Inter-Continental is still standing. It has endured Soviet occupation, multiple coups, a grievous civil war, a US invasion and the rise, fall and rise of the Taliban. History lives within its scarred windows and walls.

Lyse Doucet, the BBC's Chief International Correspondent, has been checking into the Inter-Continental since 1988. And here, she uses its story to craft a richly immersive history of modern Afghanistan.

It is the story of Hazrat, the septuagenarian housekeeper who still holds fast to his Inter-Continental training from the hotel's 1970s glory days, an era of haute cuisine and high fashion, when Afghanistan was a kingdom and Kabul was the 'Paris of Asia'. It is the story of Abida, who became the first female chef to cook in the Inter-Con's famous kitchen after the fall of the Taliban in 2001. And it is the story of Malalai and Sadeq, the twenty-something staff who seized every opportunity offered by two decades of fragile democracy, only to witness the Taliban roaring back in 2021.

The result is a remarkably vivid history of how Afghans have survived a half century of destruction and disruption. It is the story of a hotel but also the story of a people.