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Barbara Kingsolver wins 2023 Women's Prize for Fiction with 'brilliant' Demon Copperhead
American author Barbara Kingsolver has won the 2023 Women’s Prize for Fiction with her “brilliant and visceral” 10th novel Demon Copperhead (Faber & Faber).
Kingsolver also becomes the first double winner of the prize, having previously won in 2010 with The Lacuna (Faber & Faber).
The announcement was made at an awards ceremony in Bedford Square Gardens, central London, on 14th June, hosted by novelist and prize founder and director Kate Mosse. The 2023 chair of judges, Louise Minchin, presented the author with the £30,000 prize, endowed by an anonymous donor, alongside the Bessie — a limited-edition bronze figurine by Grizel Niven.
Minchin said: “Barbara Kingsolver has written a towering, deeply powerful and significant book. In a year of outstanding fiction by women, we made a unanimous decision on Demon Copperhead as our winner. Brilliant and visceral, it is storytelling by an author at the top of her game. We were all deeply moved by Demon, his gentle optimism, resilience and determination despite everything being set against him. An exposé of modern America, its opioid crisis and the detrimental treatment of deprived and maligned communities, Demon Copperhead tackles universal themes – from addiction and poverty, to family, love, and the power of friendship and art – it packs a triumphant emotional punch, and it is a novel that will withstand the test of time.”
The book is a reimagining of Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield for modern times, set in the Appalachian mountains in Virginia in the US.
Accepting the prize, Kingsolver appeared tearful, and said she was "surprised" that "lightning had struck twice". She praised her fellow shortlistees before adding: "For those of you who took Demon into your hearts, took my place and my people and our community and our tragedies and hopes into your life and made them yours, thank you. Literature is how we make our hearts grow bigger and that’s how we change the world."
Speaking to The Bookseller at the ceremony, Kingsolver commended the "collegiality" of the prize, and despite a recent string of prizes and shortlist nominations for Demon Copperhead, insisted she tries very hard "to not even think of readers" when writing. "I try so hard to write without anybody looking over my shoulder. Because the important thing is to think about is my exact position in the universe, what it is I have to say, what I care about so much that I’ll spend years of my life working through.
"It’s an audacious act writing a novel. I’m asking you to listen to me for ten hours or something. Where I come from you don’t do that, that’s rude. It’s a big deal to have a reader to listen to me. So I try and make sure it’s important and I do everything I can to make it the best story it can be."
Reflecting on winning the prize again, aged 68, she said: "It’s kind of amazing and wonderful to have a job where the older you get the more you have to offer. I think we think we’re looking for the story, but I think we’re really looking for the wisdom and deep connections with our own lives and other lives".
She said she’s "excited" for the next novel and is working on an adaptation of Demon Copperhead.
Her editor Louisa Joyner described Kingsolver as "a writer of profound political motivation" and said the Faber team felt "incredibly proud and humbled" by her win. "She uses her incredible skill to take us to places we don’t even realise we’re not seeing" she said, promising to do "everything we can to maximise every opportunity to get her into every possible reading space" opening Kingsolver to a younger and even broader audience.
Kingsolver has sold 1.06 million books sold for £8.2m since 1998, with her bestseller The Poisonwood Bible (Faber & Faber) in paperback, at 333,164 copies sold. Demon Copperhead is on 26,715 copies in paperback and 19,168 copies in hardback.
Kingsolver fought off competition from a shortlist featuring Maggie O’Farrell’s The Marriage Portrait (Tinder Press), Louise Kennedy’s Trespasses (Bloomsbury), Jacqueline Crooks’ Fire Rush (Jonathan Cape), Priscilla Morris’ Black Butterflies (Duckworth) and Laline Paull’s Pod (Corsair).
On the judging panel this year were novelist and playwright Rachel Joyce, writer and journalist Bella Mackie, author Irenosen Okojie, and member of parliament for Hampstead and Kilburn and shadow economic secretary to the treasury Tulip Siddiq.
Earlier this year the Women’s Prize Trust announced the launch of the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction, which will be awarded for the first time in 2024.
