Yael van der Wouden and Rachel Clarke win Women's Prize book awards
The U.K. prize annually celebrates the best novel written in English by a woman
Dutch writer Yael van der Wouden has won the 2025 Women's Prize for Fiction for her debut novel The Safekeep, a story of repressed emotion and suppressed historical memory in the Netherlands after the Second World War.
British physician and author Rachel Clarke won the Women's Prize for Nonfiction for exploring the human drama behind organ donation in The Story of a Heart.
The awards were presented in a gala event in London on June 12. Both prizes carry a £30,000 prize (approx. $55,367 Cdn) prize and are open to female English-language writers from any country.
In addition to the prize money, the winners also receive the "Bessie," a bronze statue made by the late British sculptor, Grizel Niven.
Last year Van der Wouden became the first Dutch writer to be a finalist for the prestigious Booker Prize for The Safekeep. Set in the early 1960s, the novel centers on a Dutch family, their house, and the secrets they both hold.
Author Kit de Waal, who chaired the fiction judging panel, called it a "beautiful, shocking and sensuous" book that reveals "an aspect of war and the Holocaust that has been, until now, mostly unexplored in fiction."
Van der Wouden said in her acceptance speech that "hormonally, I am intersex," and that fact "defined my life throughout my teens until I advocated for the healthcare that I needed."
She said the fact she was "receiving truly the greatest honour of my life as a woman ... is because of every single trans person who's fought for healthcare, who changed the system, the law, societal standards, themselves. I stand on their shoulders."
Previous winners of the fiction prize, founded in 1996, include Zadie Smith, Tayari Jones and Barbara Kingsolver.
In 2024, award organizers launched a companion nonfiction award to help rectify an imbalance in publishing.
Clarke works as a palliative care doctor, and The Story of a Heart traces a transplant through the true stories of two children: one killed in a car crash, and one who could be saved by a new heart.
Journalist Kavita Puri, who led the judges, said "Clarke's writing is authoritative, beautiful and compassionate. The research is meticulous, and the storytelling is expertly crafted."
Accepting the award, Clarke paid tribute to the families of both Keira, who died at nine, and the recipient of her heart, Max — now a "16-year-old who likes kickboxing."
Clarke said she hoped the book would be a counterweight to the "utterly unscientific rhetoric" coming from some politicians in the United States and elsewhere.
To mark the prize's 30th birthday, U.K. writer Bernardine Evaristo was awarded a £100,000 (approx. $184,567 Cdn) Outstanding Contribution Award for her "transformative impact on literature and her unwavering dedication to uplifting under-represented voices."
Evaristo won the Booker Prize in 2019, and was a Women's Prize finalist the following year, for Girl, Woman, Other.
Last year's winner was V.V. Ganeshananthan for her novel Brotherless Night.
Canadians who have won the award include Toronto's Anne Michaels for her 1996 novel Fugitive Pieces and Winnipeg's Carol Shields for her 1997 novel Larry's Party.
Other past winners include Maggie O'Farrell, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Zadie Smith.
-- with files from CBC Books
