Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction

FIVE WOMEN, 150 BOOKS, SIX MONTHS, ONE PRIZE To celebrate the first year of the Baileys sponsorship of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, Baileys has commissioned acclaimed portrait photographer, Suki Dhanda, to photograph the 2014 judging panel. The panel has been announced today as Mary Beard, Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge, writer Denise Mina, Times columnist, author and screenwriter, Caitlin Moran and BBC broadcaster and journalist, Sophie Raworth. The panel will be chaired by former Managing Director of Penguin Books UK and Chief Executive of the Girls’ Day School Trust, Helen Fraser. “I am delighted to be chairing the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction,” commented Helen Fraser. “It is a fantastic quartet of judges, and I am looking forward enormously to beginning on our journey of engaging with some extraordinary minds and extraordinary voices.” Every year, a panel of five women, all passionate readers and highly successful and inspiring women, are selected to judge the prize. The Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction is the UK’s most prestigious annual book award for fiction written by a woman. Now in its nineteenth year*, the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction was set up to celebrate excellence and originality in writing by women throughout the world. The judges between them will be reading more than 150 books over the next six months as they look to crown the next winner. Previous winners of the prize include A.M. Homes for May We Be Forgiven (2013) and Zadie Smith for On Beauty (2006). Any woman writing in English – whatever her nationality, country of residence, age or subject matter – is eligible. The winner will receive a cheque for £30,000 and a limited edition bronze figurine known as a ‘Bessie’, created and donated by the artist Grizel Niven. Both are anonymously endowed. The Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction 2014 will be awarded on June 4th 2014 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London. www.womensprizeforfiction.co.uk * The Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction was known as the Orange Prize for Fiction between 1996 and 2012. BAILEYS WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2014: JUDGES’ BIOGRAPHIES

Helen Fraser, (Chair): Chief Executive of the Girls’ Day School Trust and formerly managing director of Penguin Books UK Helen Fraser has spent most of her career in book publishing. She has worked, variously, for Methuen, Collins and Heinemann, finishing there as managing director of Reed Consumer books. Her last thirteen years in publishing were spent as managing director of Penguin Books UK. In 2009, she became chief executive of the Girls’ Day School Trust. The UK’s 12th largest charity, the Trust runs 24 schools and two academies and educates almost 20,000 girls. Helen speaks and writes about women in education and women in the workplace. Mary Beard: Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge Mary Beard is one of Britain's best-known Classicists. A distinguished Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Newnham College, she has written numerous books on the Ancient World, including the 2008 Wolfson Prize-winner, Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town. In addition Mary has presented a highly-acclaimed TV series, Meet the Romans, is Classics editor of the Times Literary Supplement and writes an engaging blog, 'A Don's Life'. Mary is a Fellow of the British Academy and was made an OBE in the New Year’s Honours List 2013 for services to Classical scholarship. Her forthcoming book is on the subject of Roman laughter. Denise Mina: Writer Denise Mina is the author of eleven novels which have been translated into fifteen languages. She has won, variously, the Theakstons’ Crime Novel of the Year (twice), CWA daggers, Anthony Awards, Spirit of Scotland Award, been shortlisted for an Edgar and the LA Times Book of the Year, CWA Gold Dagger. She has written three plays, a graphic novel, wrote Hellblazer for a year and she also writes comics. She is currently adapting Steig Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy as a series of graphic novels for Vertigo. Caitlin Moran: Times Columnist, Author and Screenwriter Caitlin Moran was home-educated alongside seven siblings in a council house in Wolverhampton. She published her first novel at the age of 16, and has been a columnist at The Times since she was eighteen, where she has won Columnist, Critic and Interviewer of the Year at the British Press Awards. Her second book, How To Be A Woman, won the Galaxy Book Of The Year and became an international bestseller, currently published in 28 countries. Sophie Raworth: BBC Broadcaster and Journalist Sophie Raworth is a BBC presenter and journalist. She presents the BBC's News at One and regularly appears on the 6 and 10 O'clock news. Sophie is a regular member of the BBC’s events team and has covered everything from the Royal Wedding to the 2012 Olympics. She has also fronted several documentaries including The Trouble with Working Women for BBC2 and several Panoramas, including Too Much Too Young on the sexualisation of children.