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Lionel Shriver has won the 2005 Orange Prize for Fiction with her seventh novel, WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN, a stunning examination of how tragedy affects a town, a marriage, and a family.
Shriver got a lot of attention for admitting that she had really wanted to win. She thinks it would have been different for a male writer. "Throughout the whole Orange prize experience I was confronted with evidence that women are uncomfortable with naked ambition, trained to have low expectations, embarrassed by head-to-head competition, and virtually obliged to act abashed when they win. In contrast to a certain other sex that will go unmentioned."
Runners-up included:
Joolz Denby for BILLIE MORGAN
Jane Gardam for OLD FILTH
Sheri Holman for THE MAMMOTH CHEESE
Marina Lewycka for A SHORT HISTORY OF TRACTORS IN UKRAINIAN
Maile Meloy for LIARS AND SAINTS
The Orange Prize for Fiction is the UK's largest annual literary award for a single novel. The main criteria is that the novel is by a woman writing in English and published in Britain between April 1 and March 31 of the year the prize is awarded. The Orange Prize aims to celebrate novels of excellence, originality and accessibility, and to promote women writers to as wide a range of male and female readers as possible. The annual prize money of £30,000, along with a bronze figurine created by Grizel Niven known as the "Bessie," are anonymously endowed.
More information about the Orange Prize can be found at http://www.orangeprize.co.uk.
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