Michaela Cullen
Author, filmmaker and Zen Buddhist priest Ruth Ozeki has been announced as the winner of the 2022 Women’s Prize for Fiction for her fourth novel The Book of Form and Emptiness.
“Now, more than ever…this is a time to speak out, and we need to rewrite, somehow, the dominant narratives that have landed us into quite dire straits, and this prize has never been more timely,” Ozeki said as she accepted the prize.
The annual Women’s Prize for Fiction winner was live-streamed on June 15th from Bedford Square Gardens, announced by 2022 Chair of Judges Mary Ann Seighart.
Ozeki writes a powerful, imaginative, heart-warming, and compassionate story about a family coming to terms with an unexpected loss, touching on mental health and the importance of family relationships.
Praised by judges as a “celebration of the power of books and reading, it tackles big issues of life and death, and is a complete joy to read,” Ozeki’s novel follows the story of a fourteen-year-old after he loses his father and begins to hear voices coming from household objects.
The Women’s Prize for Fiction is one of the UK’s most prestigious annual fiction awards, celebrating and recognising women’s literary achievements.
The award was founded in 1996, sparked by years of unrecognition for female writers in major fiction awards, most notably the all-male shortlist for the Booker Prize in 1991.
Now in its 27th year, the award has honoured some of the greatest female novelists, including Andrea Levy, Maggie O’Farrell and Madeline Miller.
“I would not be here without the support of women and women’s institutions.”
Ozeki has now joined the list of winners with her novel that “stood out for its originality, its sparkling writing, its warmth, depth, intelligence, humour and poignancy.”
“I would not be here without the support of women and women’s institutions, and this is why this prize is so important to me,” said Ozeki.
“I went to one of the oldest existing women’s colleges in the United States, Smith College, because Sylvia Plath went there…while I was at Smith, I learned that my true love was fiction, and I was supported in that.”
“This year has been an incredible year for fiction written by women.”
Also shortlisted for the prize were Maggie Shipstead for her novel Great Circle, Elif Shafak for The Island of Missing Trees, Meg Mason for Sorrow and Bliss, Lisa Allen-Agostini for The Bread the Devil Knead and Louise Erdrich for The Sentence.
Mary Ann Seighart expressed the difficult decision to come up with a winner.
“This year has been an incredible year for fiction written by women, and I am deliberately not calling it women’s fiction, because it’s fiction for the whole of humanity, covering the human condition in all its glories and horrors,” she said.
Featured image courtesy of Gülfer ERGİN on Unsplash. Image license can be found here. No changes were made to this image.
Michaela Cullen
Michaela is currently in her third year studying Journalism at the University of Technology Sydney. She has contributed to the UTS newsroom Central News with a range of political and social justice stories. She is also the 2023 Australian Foreign Policy Fellow for Young Australians in International Affairs and Editor-in-Chief of the United Nations Youth NSW Global Advocate Magazine.