91-year-old author, Maureen Duffy has won the inaugural Pioneer Prize, a literary award for women over 60. The RSL Pioneer Prize is administered by the Royal Society of Literature and was launched by their president Bernardine Evaristo using the £100,000 prize money she herself was awarded by the Women’s Prize, honouring the writer with a one-off outstanding contribution award to mark the 30th anniversary of the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Evaristo became the first Black woman to win the prestigious Women’s Prize in 2019, sharing the prize with fellow author, Margaret Atwood.
After being awarded this year, Evaristo announced her plans to put the money back into the writing community, supporting author women writers in a new project.
She said: “I’m not doing it because I’m a multi-millionaire. It just feels right to put back in. We should support each other.”
The new project set up by the 66-year-old author was the RSL Pioneer Prize which aims to celebrate ‘pioneering’ British female writers, over the age of 60. The prize’s inagural winner is 91-year-old Maureen Duffy; a poet, playwright, novelist, non-fiction writer and activist who is known as being one of the first gay women in British public life to be open about her sexuality. Duffy’s works include the 1966 novel, The Microcosm set in the lesbian club, ‘Gateways’, in London, and explores the acceptance of lesbians.
Bernardine Evaristo and Maureen Duffy. Photograph: Leo Cackett
Duffy found out she had won the prize when Evaristo visited her at home earlier this month.
“I hope this encourages writers to keep on writing, because it is a hard thing to support yourself as a writer in this country,” she said.
Talking about her decision to use her prize money to launch this prize, Evaristo added: “It felt right that I should share this substantial and unexpected windfall with other older women writers as a way to acknowledge their pioneer spirits and achievements.
“It’s very easy to forget the feminist struggles of the past and the intrepid women who paved the way for successive generations, and it’s important to celebrate our trailblazers while they are still around to enjoy it.
“It’s no secret that older women writers tend to be overlooked, while older male writers often enjoy substantial careers until they topple over into their graves,” she wrote in the Observer on Sunday. “While Duffy has sadly slipped from view of late […] she deserves to be better known to younger generations.”
Evaristo who chose Maureen Duffy to receive the Prize in 2025 descirbed the decision as a “no-brainer” for the inaugural prize. In future years of the award, however, the Pioneer Prize will focus on a particular literary genre, and be judged by specialists in the field, including agents, publishers, critics, and writers. Each winner will also be asked to spotlight a “deceased and forgotten” female writer who inspired them when they were starting out, as well as three emerging writers.
“When I conceived of the prize, Maureen Duffy was always foremost in my mind as the recipient because she is a true trailblazer in every sense of the word,” said Evaristo. “Raised in a working-class, single-parent family, she has had a prodigious, prolific and varied career as a brilliant, imaginative and ground-breaking writer since the early 1960s, as well as being an advocate for writers. She was instrumental in campaigning for writers’ licensing rights, which led to the formation of the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society.”
Maureen Duffy will be officially awarded the 2025 Pioneer Prize at an event at the British Library, London, on 30th November.
