Many news sources have reported that some high-profile private donors have stepped in to save the UK's only prize for female writers after failing to come up with a long-term backer to replace Orange for 2013.

 

 

I sighed when I read this. I’m not against literary awards. I think it’s good to recognize someone’s talent and hard work. I certainly would never turn down an award, but I see it as a gift, not a validation for or of my writing. But that’s not why I sighed. It irks me that we feel the need for a women only (or a men only) award in any area. Having such an award doesn’t prove anything except how far we haven’t come as a culture. Having an award just like the boys do isn’t equality. It’s segregation. You have your award and I have mine. We can't be judged together because we're different. Aren’t we great? We’re not. What we are is way too focused on getting a pat on the back and a “good job” from our peers.

 

It’s easy to forget in today’s increasingly competitive industry, but writing isn’t supposed to be about being the best or winning the most awards. It isn’t supposed to be about who put out the most books, or the longest book, or the bestselling book, or who made the most money. Writing is supposed to be about the reader. To that end, identifying a writer with a single race, age, gender or any other uncontrollable attribute by awarding their writing based on said attribute is not a good thing. The reader should be able to pick up a book and enjoy the story, without being influenced by the writer’s gender, race or age.

 

Literary prizes are valuable. They’re a great marketing tool. Yes, it’s good for the author to sell those books, but these prizes shouldn’t be why we write. They should be a bonus, like a pay raise; recognition for hard work and dedication to the craft. Literary prizes shouldn’t be seen as a measure of literary worth. Being "overlooked" shouldn't bother any of us. Why? Because reading is subjective. Give one book to 50 people and you’re going to get 50 different reactions. Not a single one of those reactions will be wrong in its measure of the literary value of the work. The judges handing out the prizes are just as subjective as the rest of the world. What one panel would deem a winner, the next would toss aside. Reading is personal, and so should writing be. It’s an isolated activity, one that is usually done in seclusion, with words and images taken from the writer’s head so they can be placed upon the page for the reader to enjoy. Because I’m a woman doesn’t make me any more or less deserving of an award than a man writing the same genre. Because I’m tall, Canadian, Caucasian, divorced, old, young, or anything else shouldn’t dictate that merit either. An award based on the standards I mentioned above means less than an award taking none of that into account.

 

Setting up an award that is available to one gender only doesn’t make things equal. In my opinion it’s the equivalent to men and women using separate entrances in a building or sitting in separate sections of a restaurant. It just excludes that gender even more. “It gets women writers the attention they deserve but wouldn’t otherwise get.” No. While I won’t disagree that many phenomenal female writers have been overlooked for literary awards, so have a lot of phenomenal male writers. Would you want your book placed on a shortlist simply because they need a token female? I wouldn’t. What a gender-based award for writing gets is a pat on the back, kudos, ego-stroking, and congratulations for having a vagina or a penis. It’s not a measure of success or ability. Women write a lot of fiction and we have huge fan bases. There are just as many successful female authors as there are male authors. We’re overlooked by the prize givers? So? As long as we’re not overlooked by the readers, do we really need the ego stroke?

 

As writers, I think we would all be better off if we ignored the hoopla that is awards and marketing. Just write. Evaluate our literary merit on our readers' reactions. That’s what really matters, isn’t it?

 

What do you think; do writing prizes offer any realistic evaluation of literary merit? Should they be based on any criteria other than quality writing?