Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction 2025: Longlist announced

The Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction has announced its 2025 longlist, including the Swedish singer Neneh Cherry, British-Chinese member of parliament Yuan Yang and American Pulitzer Prize winner Anne Applebaum. 

Of the 16 authors nominated for the £30,000 (€35,000) prize, 11 are British, with a selection of books that offer “insight into new experiences and perspectives, and that bring overlooked stories back to life and recognition,” Kavita Puri, this year’s Chair of Judges, said. 

The award, which aims to promote excellence in non-fiction writing, original voices and greater accessibility, was first launched in 2023 as the sister prize to the Women’s Prize for Fiction, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year.  

Cherry was longlisted for her deeply affecting memoir, ‘A Thousand Threads’, which traces her musical career and life through the emotional highs and lows that shaped them.

Yang was chosen for her intimate portrait of four Chinese women in ‘Private Revolutions’, while Applebaum’s ‘Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World’ tackles the democratic threats of kleptocratic authoritarianism. 

Other nominees include Rachel Clarke for ‘The Story of A Heart’, Jenni Fagan for ‘Ootlin’, Sue Prideaux for ‘Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin’ and Chloe Dalton for ‘Raising Hare’. 

“Amongst this stellar list, there are also reads that expertly steer us through the most pressing issues of our time, show the resilience of the human spirit, alongside others that elucidate the dangers of unchecked power, the consequence of oppression and the need for action and defiance,” Puri said. 

The award is open globally to any books by female writers published in the UK between 1 April 2024 and 31 March 2025.

Alongside Puri, the panel of judges includes writers Dr Leah Broad, Elizabeth Buchan, Dr Elizabeth-Jane Burnett and Emma Gannon. They will narrow down the longlist to a shortlist of six, due to be announced on 26 March, with the final awards ceremony taking place on 12 June in London at the same time as the 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction.

Canadian author and activist Naomi Klein won the inaugural award last year for ‘Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World ‘, an in-depth and biting exploration of the scourge of online misinformation.

The non-fiction prize was founded after a survey revealed that only 35.5% of books awarded a nonf-iction prize in the past decade were written by woman, across seven UK non-fiction prizes. They also determined that, as of 2022, just 26.5% of non-fiction books by female writers were reviewed in national newspapers.

Longlist for Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction 2025:

• Anne Applebaum Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World

• Eleanor Barraclough Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age

• Helen Castor The Eagle and the Hart: The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV

• Neneh Cherry A Thousand Threads

• Rachel Clarke The Story of A Heart

• Chloe Dalton Raising Hare

• Jenni Fagan Ootlin

• Lulu Miller Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love and the Hidden Order of Life

• Clare Mulley Agent Zo: The Untold Stories of Fearless WW2 Resistance Fighter Elżbieta Zawacka

• Rebecca Nagle By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land

• Sue Prideaux Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin

• Helen Scales What the Wild Sea Can Be: The Future of the World’s Ocean

• Kate Summerscale The Peepshow: The Murders at 10 Rillington Place

• Harriet Wistrich Sister in Law: Fighting for Justice in a System Designed by Men

• Alexis Wright Tracker

• Yuan Yang Private Revolutions: Coming of Age in a New China