New Literary Award Launches for Funny Women Writers

In recent years the Wodehouse prize, the only literary prize for comic fiction, has come under scrutiny and accusations of sexism after only awarding the prize to women three times in its eighteen years. Since 1991, Helen Fielding, Marina Lewycka and Hannah Rothschild are the only authors to win the prize and accusations of sexism have been rife.

In response to this Helen Lederer has launched the CWIP, Comedy Women in Print Award, which will celebrate comedic writing from female only authors. Lederer told The Guardian that ‘more needs to be done to celebrate the achievments on women excelling in this field” and hopes the new prize will “bring forward the next generation of female talent as well as shine a light on women who have an established comedy writing career.”

The event is a similar response to accusations a few years ago that the Booker Prize didn’t celebrate female authors enough, and from that spawned the Women’s Prize for Fiction, now one of the most celebrated literary prizes each year.

Lederer is an established comic and writer, best known for playing the role of Catriona in Absolutely Fabulous, she published her debut novel Losing It in 2015, upon which she realised how few prizes there are for funny women.

The new prize, the Comedy Women in Print Award will open for submissions on 24th August 2018 with a longlist announced in March of next year, a shortlist in May and the inaugural winners announced in June 2019.