Staunch Book Prize
The Staunch Book Prize is an award given to thriller novels that avoid featuring violence to women. British writer and screenwriter Bridget Lawless founded the prize in 2018. Some writers object to the premise of the award, referring to it as a "gag order" and accusing it of censorship.[1]
Background
[edit | edit source]But we are concerned about the way that women are depicted as the victims of extreme torture, rape and murder, graphically described, bloody, terrifying and prolonged, normalised and offered up as entertainment. And guess what, so are lots of people, including readers who reject it by preference, and those working to end violence towards women.
Lawless established the prize in 2018 after she noticed the number of films that used rape as a plot device in the 2017 British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award nominees,[2] and was inspired by the Time's Up[3] and Me Too[4] movements, to encourage alternatives to violence-against-women tropes.[5]
The official website describes the criteria as "a novel in the thriller genre in which no woman is beaten, stalked, sexually exploited, raped or murdered."[6] The Staunch Book Prize is open to traditionally published, self-published and not-yet-published works[2] and awards £2,000 (funded by Lawless).[5] The entry fee is £20.[7]
The annual winner is announced on November 25, which is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.[2] The original novel prize was suspended for 2021 and was projected to return in 2022.[8] In 2022, the Staunch Book Prize closed.[9]
Controversy
[edit | edit source]Several writers criticized the Staunch Book Prize. Crime writer Sarah Hilary equated the prize criteria with silencing the voices of domestic violence victims, and called it "not a prize so much as a gagging order".[1] Domestic noir writer Julia Crouch said "what that kind of prize immediately knocks out is the lived experience of millions of women in this country".[10]
In World Literature Today, writer Janet Clark counters the criticism by saying "the prize is one way of drawing attention toward an undeniable trend of using horrific and perverse brutality as cheap plot devices. And it works: people talk about it."[11] Hallie Rubenhold, writing in The Guardian, calls the prize "noble in sentiment", while acknowledging Val McDermid's argument that "acts of misogyny and violence against women are being committed, they need to be written about, and not swept under the carpet."[12]
The first winner of the prize, Jock Serong, says the prize addresses "that laziness that creeps in, the tropes where women and girls are used unthinkingly as default victims in the story."[7] Slate notes that the debate over the prize accomplishes the prize's purpose of drawing attention to the use of violence against women in fiction.[13]
Winners
[edit | edit source]- 2018: Jock Serong for On the Java Ridge[14]
- 2019: Samantha Harvey for The Western Wind[15]
- 2020: Attica Locke for Heaven, My Home[16]
Shortlist
[edit | edit source]| Year | Author | Work | Result | Ref |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | Jock Serong | On the Java Ridge | Won | [17] |
| Peter Adamson | The Kennedy Moment | Shortlisted | ||
| Alison Gaylin | If I Die Tonight | Shortlisted | ||
| Anna Porter | The Appraisal | Shortlisted | ||
| Khurrum Rahman | East of Hounslow | Shortlisted | ||
| Joyce Thompson | Cops & Queens | Shortlisted | ||
| 2019 | Samantha Harvey | The Western Wind | Won | [18] |
| Brenda Brooks | Honey: A Novel | Shortlisted | ||
| Hannelore Cayre | The Godmother | Shortlisted | ||
| Lawrence Osborne | Only to Sleep | Shortlisted | ||
| August Thomas | Liar's Candle: A Novel | Shortlisted | ||
| 2020 | Attica Locke | Heaven, My Home | Won | [19] |
| Fiona Erskine | The Chemical Reaction | Shortlisted | ||
| Aimee Liu | Glorious Boy | Shortlisted | ||
| Ottessa Moshfegh | Death in Her Hands | Shortlisted | ||
| Jock Serong | The Burning Island | Shortlisted | ||
| Paul Vidich | The Coldest Warrior | Shortlisted |
References
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