Literary ladies rejoice - today marks a landmark in women's fiction. 10 years on from its inception, the chairs of the judging panels from each year of the Orange Prize for Fiction are meeting in London tonight to pick the 'best of the best' of a decade of Orange prize-winners.
Despite markedly inauspicious beginnings (the very first question the prize's founder, Kate Mosse, had to field at the launch of the prize - from a tabloid newspaper editor, no less - was "Are you a lesbian?"), the £30,000 prize has confounded its critics and risen to become the UK's third most prestigious literary gong, after the Booker and the Whitbreads. It was the first award to recognise the achievement of Andrea Levy's Small Island, which subsequently went on to be named Whitbread Book of the Year, and has honoured established authors such as Carol Shields as well as whipping up controversy this year with its selection of Lionel Shriver's harrowing take on motherhood, We Need To Talk About Kevin. You can see the full list of previous winners here. I believe I may have mentioned in an earlier post that my vote goes to the 2002 winner, Bel Canto, Ann Patchett's sublime story of love, terrorism and opera - which is your favourite? We'll post here with the result as soon as we have it.
