Women’s Prize for Fiction 2021 Shortlist Readings Event

Last week we attended the Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlist readings event. The event was hosted in Bedford Square Gardens in a fancy little tent with lovely lights and decorations. 5 out of 6 of the shortlisted authors were there to do a reading, answer some questions and then take part in a book signing and frankly it was just great. The authors were so inspiring, it was so great to go to an in person event and it was just generally good vibes.

We’re both absolutely terrible at meeting celebrities so I think we did pretty well to have a semi-normal conversation with Patricia Lockwood and Cherie Jones. Elle’s No One is Talking About This is full of post-it notes ready for us to record an episode so that was a great talking point. And a definite highlight was when Elle told Cherie Jones that Kath wanted to write a novel one day and Cherie Jones imparted some great words of wisdom and then wrote ‘look forward to reading your book one day’ in her copy of How the One-armed Sister Sweeps Her House. 

We’re both note-takers (is that a surprise to anybody at all?) and we were frantically writing down some of the great things that the authors said during the event, here are some of our favourite quotes:

“I’m loyal to nothing else but the story”

Cherie Jones

“For me books start with a person and a place”

Claire Fuller 

“You have to have courage in fiction and one of the things you’re trying to do is join people together”

Susanna Clarke 

“Fiction requires you to think about other people”

Yaa Gyasi

“This novel is not traditional and it was never going to be”

Patricia Lockwood

Each of these novels is brilliant and completely different from the next. Franky, we’re chuffed that Piranesi won as it’s such an enchanting novel and is completely unique but we also highly rate all the other novels and honestly, we’re a big fan of a lot of the longlist too.

We truly believe that the Women’s Prize for Fiction is such an important prize in literature, as Kate Mosse OBE, founder of the Women’s Prize said at the event, we have all seen how quickly things can go backwards as well as forwards and it’s so important that we continue to celebrate women and their contribution to fiction. 

Since starting the podcast (and before obviously because we <3 books) we’ve tried to attend some sort of bookish event once a month, both to socialise and to get inspired and give us something else to talk about. We’d really love any recommendations you have for future events (in person or virtual, or even hybrid hey).