{"id":264694,"date":"2024-06-17T12:00:11","date_gmt":"2024-06-17T11:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=264694"},"modified":"2024-06-17T06:24:06","modified_gmt":"2024-06-17T05:24:06","slug":"naomi-klein-and-vv-ganeshananthan-win-womens-prize-literary-awards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/06\/naomi-klein-and-vv-ganeshananthan-win-womens-prize-literary-awards\/","title":{"rendered":"Naomi Klein and VV Ganeshananthan Win Women\u2019s Prize Literary Awards"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Both winners referenced the conflict-clouded international situation, at a time when the arts world is grappling with divisions over the Israel-Hamas war and corporate sponsorship of the arts.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

14 Jun 2024<\/em> – Author-activist Naomi Klein won the inaugural Women\u2019s Prize for Nonfiction yesterday with \u201cDoppelganger,\u201d a personal account of her plunge into the world of online misinformation.<\/p>\n

Its sister award, the Women\u2019s Prize for Fiction, went to US writer V V Ganeshananthan for her novel \u201cBrotherless Night,\u201d about a family torn apart by Sri Lanka\u2019s long civil war. Both come with 30,000 pounds ($38,000) in prize money.<\/p>\n

Both winners referenced the conflict-clouded international situation, at a time when the arts world is grappling with divisions over the Israel-Hamas war and corporate sponsorship of the arts.<\/p>\n

Klein, author of \u201cNo Logo\u201d and \u201cThe Shock Doctrine,\u201d delves into her experience being mistaken for Naomi Wolf, author of \u201cThe Beauty Myth\u201d and more recently a promulgator of anti-vaxx ideas and other conspiracy theories. Part memoir and part reportage, \u201cDoppelganger\u201d \u2014 subtitled \u201cA Trip into the Mirror World\u201d \u2014 investigates how online life has distorted reality, and asks what might be done about it.<\/p>\n

Historian Suzannah Lipscomb, who headed a panel of judges for the nonfiction award, called Klein\u2019s book \u201ca courageous, humane and optimistic call-to-arms that moves us beyond black and white, beyond Right and Left.\u201d<\/p>\n

Klein thanked the prize for \u201cnot shying away from controversy.\u201d She has backed calls for book festivals to stop taking money from companies with investments in fossil fuels or Israel\u2019s defense sector, a campaign that has led to U.K. events cancelling funding from finance firm Baillie Gifford.<\/p>\n

Some argue that starves the arts of much-needed funds, but Klein said she \u201cwanted to use the platform to call for more courage from cultural institutions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ganeshananthan\u2019s victorious second novel, which traces an aspiring medic\u2019s journey through the brutality and moral uncertainties of war, took almost two decades to complete. Novelist Monica Ali, who chaired the fiction judging panel, said \u201cBrotherless Night\u201d is \u201ca brilliant, compelling and deeply moving novel that bears witness to the intimate and epic-scale tragedies of the Sri Lankan civil war.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ganeshananthan\u2019s first novel, \u201cLove Marriage,\u201d was published in 2008, and she started \u201cBrotherless Night\u201d in 2004. She said writing historical fiction \u201ccarefully and thoughtfully\u201d about a traumatic conflict well within living memory that was true to people\u2019s experience was \u201chard work.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt took such a long time because of the chorus of people it was necessary to talk to,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She said that faced with conflicts like the Israel-Hamas war, \u201cwhat can writing do? Hopefully push people to collective actual action.\u201d<\/p>\n

The nonfiction award was launched this year to help fix the gender imbalance in the publishing world, where men buy more nonfiction than women \u2014 and write more prize-winning nonfiction books.<\/p>\n

Prize organizers say that in 2022, only 26.5% of nonfiction books reviewed in Britain\u2019s newspapers were by women, and male writers dominated established nonfiction writing prizes.<\/p>\n

Both fiction and nonfiction prizes are open to female English-language writers from any country.<\/p>\n

The fiction prize was founded in 1996, and past winners include Zadie Smith, Tayari Jones and Barbara Kingsolver, who won last year for \u201cDemon Copperhead.\u201d<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 newindianexpress.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

14 Jun 2024 – Both winners referenced the conflict-clouded international situation, at a time when the arts world is grappling with divisions over the Israel-Hamas war and corporate sponsorship of the arts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":264689,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[208],"tags":[642,1873],"class_list":["post-264694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-literature","tag-literature","tag-naomi-klein"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264694"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":264695,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264694\/revisions\/264695"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}