UK based Author Ali Smith has won the 2015 Baileys Women’s Prize (formerly known as the Orange Prize) for Fiction for her novel How to be Both. She has also won the 2014 Goldsmiths Prize and the Novel Award in the 2014 Costa Book Awards for the same book. Earlier, the book was shortlisted for the 2014 Man Booker Prize and the 2015 Folio Prize. The book was the winner of the 2014 Goldsmiths Prize.
The story of How to be Both is all about how the lives of two persons viz a 16-year-old girl named George and a 15th century Italian renaissance artist named Francesco del Cossa are connected together surpassing the boundaries of time, space and gender.
Ali Smith
- Some of Ali Smith’s Novels are Hotel World (2001), The Accidental (2005), Girl Meets Boy (2007), and There But For The (2011).
- Ali Smith was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2015 New Year Honours for services to literature.
About Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction
- Baileys Prize was set up in 1996 with an objective to celebrate and promote international fiction by women throughout the world.
- It is an annual award and it mainly celebrates excellence, originality and accessibility in women’s writing.
- The prize amount of the award is 30000 pounds and a limited edition bronze known as a ‘Bessie’, created by the artist Grizel Niven.
- Previous winners of the award include Eimear McBride for A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing (2014) and AM Homes for May We Be Forgiven(2013).
