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Eyes on the Prize: Women’s Writing and Literary Awards
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Eyes on the Prize: Women’s Writing and Literary Awards

A special issue of Humanities (ISSN 2076-0787).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 September 2022) | Viewed by 10488

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Jane Dowson

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Reader in Twentieth-Century Literature, Department of English, De Montfort University, Leicester LE1 9BH, UK
Interests: women's poetry; contemporary poetry; postcolonialism; women’s writing; modernism and the 1930s
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Of the various institutions and events that nowadays shape who and what gets read, and what counts as ‘literature, prize culture plays a key role. However, that culture is by no means homogeneous. Writers, readers, publishers, judges, ‘experts’, corporations, reviewers, and the media more generally, all routinely participate in an exercise made up of contending forces and influences. These contentions raise questions about fairness and authority in the interplay between judges’ claims of aesthetic quality, the agenda of a corporate sponsor, a writer’s reputation and image, and the politics of exclusion and inclusion.

This Special Issue investigates the interaction between literary awards and creative practices over the last fifty years. It examines the impact of a woman’s prizewinning publication on her own career, on the award itself, and on constructions of literary value. It invites papers on a particular work that considers such matters as the contexts of the prize – its published criteria and perceived stature; its historical significance with reference to previous winners; debates and controversies surrounding a winner and/or the shortlist; the constitution of the panel; and a critical evaluation of the merits of a particular work – in what ways is it, or is it not, a ‘deserving’ choice?  

Dr. Jane Dowson
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Humanities is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

11 pages, 241 KiB  
Article
“People Who Fill the Spaces”: Jodi Picoult and the Sarah Josepha Hale Award
by Jordan Hansen
Humanities 2023, 12(2), 21; https://doi.org/10.3390/h12020021 - 23 Feb 2023
Viewed by 1380
Abstract
This paper discusses the implications of Sarah Josepha Hale’s polarizing opposition to the franchise of women on her legacy award, given to many authors since its inception, but most notably to contemporary women writers whom Hale likely would have rejected. In 2019, the [...] Read more.
This paper discusses the implications of Sarah Josepha Hale’s polarizing opposition to the franchise of women on her legacy award, given to many authors since its inception, but most notably to contemporary women writers whom Hale likely would have rejected. In 2019, the award went to Jodi Picoult, an author who bridges journalistic writing on topics such as abortion, white supremacy, and gun violence, among others, with fiction novel writing. Hale’s own works are archived through the Richards Free Library, and as such, the award is given for the entire collective body of work of one nominated literary person. The award impacts not only Picoult’s career but Hale’s legacy as an open opposer to the franchise of women, as well as the opportunities for contemporary women writers. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Eyes on the Prize: Women’s Writing and Literary Awards)
12 pages, 253 KiB  
Article
‘“I Like Her Parrots”’: Accessibility, Aesthetics, Zadie Smith’s On Beauty and the Women’s Prize for Fiction
by Andy Mousley
Humanities 2022, 11(6), 151; https://doi.org/10.3390/h11060151 - 5 Dec 2022
Viewed by 1852
Abstract
One of the key criteria given to the judges of the Women’s Prize for Fiction is ‘accessibility’. Accessibility, readability and more recently ‘relatability’, have gained traction in recent years over other indices of literary value, such as quasi-modernist notions of difficulty and alterity. [...] Read more.
One of the key criteria given to the judges of the Women’s Prize for Fiction is ‘accessibility’. Accessibility, readability and more recently ‘relatability’, have gained traction in recent years over other indices of literary value, such as quasi-modernist notions of difficulty and alterity. This article questions the gendering of accessibility as well as its relationship to neoliberalism. Its specific focus is on the 2006 winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, Zadie Smith’s On Beauty, a book that foregrounds questions of aesthetics and aesthetic value and attempts in its form and content to negotiate between the popular and the literary. Simultaneously problematising and simplifying ideas of beauty and artistic worth, the novel’s success was arguably due, in part, to the way that it at once tapped into and resolved insecurities surrounding judgements of aesthetic value. Controversies over literary awards are routine, but this article argues that they were especially rife in the 2000s. This article also sets these controversies over literary value and the novel’s own various engagements with the aesthetic in the context of recent, postcritical backlashes against the hermeneutics of suspicion that came to influence literary and critical theory in the 1980s and 1990s. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Eyes on the Prize: Women’s Writing and Literary Awards)
12 pages, 254 KiB  
Article
‘Speculative Slipstreaming’: The Impact of Literary Interventions within Contemporary Science Fiction
by Laura-Jane Devanny
Humanities 2022, 11(5), 116; https://doi.org/10.3390/h11050116 - 9 Sep 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 5893
Abstract
Margaret Atwood and Jeanette Winterson are two canonical writers participating in a ‘literary slipstream’ through their ventures into science fiction, creating crossover texts that confuse the boundaries between the literary and the popular. This interface is exemplified through the awards received by these [...] Read more.
Margaret Atwood and Jeanette Winterson are two canonical writers participating in a ‘literary slipstream’ through their ventures into science fiction, creating crossover texts that confuse the boundaries between the literary and the popular. This interface is exemplified through the awards received by these writers, which help to bring literary credibility and integrity to the genre. Atwood’s first speculative novel, The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), went on to win the Arthur C. Clarke Award and was nominated for a Nebula award and the Booker Prize, whilst her MaddAddam trilogy (2003–2015) was followed by the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society in 2015. Winterson was awarded an OBE for her services to literature in the same year that she published The Stone Gods (2006), whilst her most recent novel Frankisstein (2019) was longlisted for the Booker Prize. This article explores the extent to which distinctions between the popular and the literary are reliant upon notions of inferiority and superiority, and the problematics of a desire to frame genre fiction according to perceived notions of literary value. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Eyes on the Prize: Women’s Writing and Literary Awards)
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