Women "dominate" the Bookers

[MsAmerica]

You could say that women are dominating the Booker short list.

Or you could say that not a single white male is on the list.

Women dominate 2024 Booker Prize shortlist
www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c7566xzv3n7o.amp

Female authors light up the Booker Prize shortlist
https://theweek.com/culture-life/books/female-authors-dominate-the-booker-prize-shortlist

Booker Prize shortlist announced with highest ever number of female authors
https://www.thebookseller.com/news/booker-prize-shortlist-announced-with-highest-ever-number-of-female-authors

I think I get what you mean OP. I watched a documentary about Ruth Bader Ginsburg and she was asked if her end goal aim was to have 50% women on the bench. She said no, it was to be able to have 100% women and no one batting an eyelid, and it's really stuck with me as a great attitude.

I hadn't paid any attention to the list but a couple of those look my bag, thanks for flagging.

I've always thought that the Booker shouldn't reveal the author when the judges are reading the books. It would be interesting to see who they choose if it was simply based on good writing.

Totally agree!!

How would you do that? The books are published, out there in the world being sold, reviewed, discussed — even if the judges are issued with copies without names or publishers, they’re going to know who wrote what they’re reading!, unless they’ve been kept down a well for several months!

My dad won it and he was not a woman!

There are loads of books on the list, it's unlikely they've heard of every single one. Some winners of the Booker have been debut authors no one has heard of.

If they were presented in manuscript form, with no indication of the author, I don't see it as unfeasible.

Give clues? What decade, even?

Of course they won’t have heard of every single one, but anyone who is attuned to the world of contemporary publishing or books is going to have come across some, even the debuts, as they’re often mentioned in terms of auctions in The Bookseller, and it’s really not realistic to find judges who know nothing about the book world, but who are still prepared to read a long list of 150 or 160 books over six or seven months and then enter the fraught process of choosing a shortlist. I mean, I don’t think providing the judges with anonymous copies is going to mean there is a ‘pure’ vote.

Which is not to say that book prizes aren’t pretty problematic in many ways. A friend has judged several biggish ones (not the Booker), and from what I gather, it’s all too easy for something all judges feel ‘meh’ about to win, because often four judges will be passionately arguing for four different books to win. When it’s clear no one is budging, and it’s a complete deadlock, a fifth book everyone agrees is fine but isn’t that excited about wins instead.

Well men have had several decades on top of it, can't see why women can't be some years. Most of my favourite contemporary novelists are women- not because they're women but because they are very good writers. So there's no shortage of great female authors these days

The judges aren't all reading The Bookseller and scanning for news of every single debut book coming out, there are thousands. They aren't all publishing industry insiders, they come from all walks of life.

Yes, I hope no one is suggesting that those novels by women don’t deserve their place on the shortlist. I’ve only finished Stone Yard Devotional, but liked it (well, bar the horrifying mouse plague descriptions), and have very much liked past work by Anne Michael’s and Rachel Kushner. I will definitely read Yale Van der Wouden’s The Safekeep. The others I know nothing about yet.

I'm not suggesting that women shouldn't be on the list. I was wondering if Atwood for example, would have won the Booker if she hadn't been Atwood.

This year the only judge who isn’t a writer or a literary editor is the musician Nitin Sawhney, so I’d say that not only do they not come from all walks of life, in this or any other year, they are pretty heavily concentrated on people who have a lot to do with books and their production.

As you’d expect, really— it doesn’t pay that well, and most of them are fitting reading 150 or so novels around other work over six months or so. You need people who read well, accurately, fast, and have good recall of a large number of novels, are able to judge their achievement, and an ability to be articulate in their sense of why something deserves the shortlist. It’s a big commitment — you’re essentially reading a novel a day, and meeting once a month to discuss them.

Well, some very famous authors have never won it…?

Millions of famous authors haven't won it, that's not the point.

There have been people on the panel such as Fostrup for example, who wouldn't know all the newly released titles. I would argue that even writers don't know every book released and it's now international, so you're talking about millions of titles.

Some panelists are writers, some are creatives, some are from publishing, there's no one type of judge. They're not all going to recognise every book on the list and every author, like I said, debut authors have won.

I find it highly unlikely that a panel of people would know the author of over a hundred books from the manuscript.

Look, no one is suggesting all judges are going to recognise all longlisted novels. Of course they wouldn’t.

But your suggestion up the thread that judges given manuscripts without author names so that they judge blind, purely on ‘good writing’, is just not workable.

The prominent authors on the shortlist, if not immediately recognisable to a reading judge because of their style/subject matter, are going to be reviewed, advertised, discussed on arts programmes, piled up prominently in bookstores, and their authors will be appearing at literary festivals etc etc. A big debut likewise. If you are a judge, you will inevitably be able to identify some novels, whether because you know the author’s work already, or because you knew Colm Toibin was writing a sequel to Brooklyn, or you saw a review in the Guardian of a debut novel about an Australian who falls in love with the headmaster’s wife at an English boarding school, and lo and behold, your unnamed manuscript is about an Australian falling in love with a headmaster’s wife etc.

There’s no way of judging blind.

No, I'm not suggesting that some members of the panel won't recognise a book. It's a possibility they will. However, it's unlikely all the panelists will recognise the book, some may not and the person who knows the author obviously has to justify their choice with the other panelists.

It's extremely unlikely that all the panelists will recognise the majority of authors in the longlist.

Musicians are judged blind when they are auditioned for orchestras. They play behind a panel so the judges don't know their sex or ethnicity.

I'd out myself!

I totally agree with you @poppyzbrite4 - it is the literal case in musical arts. No reason why the same rules cannot be applied in literature and the early stages will be entry via publishers/agents anyway, as they are now!

Fun fact: my old university professor was the chair the year Life of Pi won. Didn’t surprise me at all as Lisa Jardine was always fairly avant garde in her approach to everything!

Interesting idea, but physically problematic, since they can't read them in manuscript.

You’re misunderstanding me. If there is no possibility of judging the entire long list blind, which there isn’t, there’s no value in the tokenism of sending out MS without identifying information. It isn’t going to put the already established authors, who are immediately identifiable to anyone who is relatively well-informed about contemporary fiction, regardless of the presence of a name/title, on the same footing as the debuts.

Blind auditioning musicians to fill an orchestra seat works because even if you know exactly who is likely to be auditioning, you are prevented from identifying them while they are actually playing behind a screen.

No musician seeking an orchestra seat is going to produce such an idiosyncratic interpretation of the audition piece that they going to be readily identifiable, whereas presenting ‘blind’ numbered MS would simply mean the judges talked about Manuscript 87, the Ali Smith, Manuscript 124, the Hilary Mantel and the Anne Enright.

Plus the ‘blind’ lasts only a few minutes for an orchestra panel, rather than the six or seven months taken for a list of 160 or so novels to be turned into a shortlist.

So all the books there are 100% on their own merit and worthy books in their own right?

We aren't going to agree so let's leave it there.

I don't believe so, no. I don't know if the Booker has ever really been about merit. They seem to like to choose controversial titles to stir up controversy. For many years their lists were mostly men which is why the Orange prize started, because the whole shortlist was male.