The winners of the 2026 Women’s Prize for Fiction and Nonfiction were announced on Thursday at a ceremony in London. Debut author Virginia Evans’s The Correspondent won in the Fiction category, while The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A People’s History of Afghanistan by Lyse Doucet won in the Nonfiction category. Evans and Doucet will each receive £30,000 and the “Bessie”, a bronze statuette created by the artist Grizel Niven

The Women’s Prize for Fiction was established in 1996 to highlight and remedy the imbalance in coverage and reverence given to women writers versus their male peers. The Correspondent is composed of letters to friends, family and real-life authors. It is an uplifting and moving novel that confronts the hubris of youth with the wisdom of older age. Through her 73-year-old protagonist Sybil Van Antwerp’s connection with the written word, Evans considers the choices we make, those we regret, and unexpected second chances.

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The chair of the fiction jury, Julia Gillard, said that The Correspondent “[is] a remarkable novel, with an exemplary combination of originality, excellence and accessibility. It is no mean feat to write a life in letters, but Evans makes this feel effortless, asking the reader to consider the choices we make, whilst elevating an ordinary life in the most heartfelt of ways. The sheer skill required to render an emotionally resonant and engaging work in this format is spectacular. This is a novel that captured our hearts and should be read and savoured by all.”

The Women’s Prize for Nonfiction is awarded to exceptional narrative non-fiction by women. The Prize promotes excellence in writing, robust research, original narrative voices and accessibility, showcasing women’s expertise across a range of fields.

In The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A People’s History of Afghanistan, Doucet writes about witnessing a Soviet evacuation, a devastating civil war, the US invasion, and the rise, and the fall and rise of the Taliban, all from within the increasingly battered walls of the Inter-Continental Hotel in Kabul. Established in 1969, The Inter-Con has never closed its doors.

Thangam Debbonaire, the chair of the nonfiction jury said that the book is “a perfect work of narrative non-fiction: it is not only cleverly constructed and brilliantly researched, but each and every element is handled with extraordinary sensitivity and warmth – it will move you to tears or make you laugh, or perhaps both. Informed by decades of excellent reporting, Doucet centres the real-life experiences of people – the staff and guests, alongside the hotel itself – and with the future of Afghanistan still being written, this book’s importance will only get stronger as the years go by.”