Orange prize: longlist announced

[David51]

Orange prize longlist

I'm glad ROOM is there, haven't read the others. But hey feminists, do we still need a women-only book prize?

Controversial!

the 'still' is interesting. Why would we need it any less now than we used to?

women are winning the actual Booker no more often now than they were in the 70s.

Well, women authors have won 3 out of the last 5 Bookers. And last time at least, 3 out of the 5 judges were women.

The Costa & Samual Johnson prizes are about 50/50

So I suppose the question is, at what point will there no longer be a need for a women-only fiction prize?

women writers have won 3 out of the last 10 Bookers.

how good it looks depends where you count it from.

men won 5 in a row from 2001 to 2005. Have women ever won more than twice in a row?

definitely still needed. I just read the bidisha article on the thread about "Freedom" and usually when it comes to authors it's male authors that get all the glory, win the awards etc, and it ain't because they're better writers. Ian McEwan, for example...

Aha - the Guardian is on the case:

I'm an Orange Prize convert

Of course it's needed.

When won't it be? When we have equality. How many women have won an individual award is not proxy for whether or not there is gender equality in publishing.