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Women's Prize 2026: Virginia Evans's letter novel and Lyse Doucet's Kabul hotel history win

American novelist Virginia Evans won the 2026 Women's Prize for Fiction on Thursday, June 11, for The Correspondent, and BBC chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet won the Women's Prize for Non-Fiction for The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A People's History of Afghanistan. Each prize carries £30,000. The winners were named at the prize's summer party in Bedford Square Gardens, London, The Irish Times reported.

The Correspondent is told through letters written by Sybil Van Antwerp, a 73-year-old retired lawyer, as she tries to mend relationships with her family. According to the Associated Press story carried by Jamaica's The Gleaner, Evans wrote seven novels that were never published before this one, which she wrote during the pandemic. Released quietly in 2025, it became a word-of-mouth bestseller and book-club favourite, and a film starring Jane Fonda is in development.

Fiction chair Julia Gillard said the novel “captured our hearts.” — via The Gleaner

The Irish Times focused on Dublin: Evans sold her home to move there with her young family and took a creative writing master's at Trinity College's Oscar Wilde Centre, studying under writers including Claire Keegan. The Irish News said Doucet's book draws on her 40 years of staying at the Kabul Inter-Continental, and that she is the third non-fiction winner since that prize launched in 2024, after Naomi Klein and Rachel Clarke. Non-fiction chair Thangam Debbonaire called the book “a perfect work of narrative non-fiction.”

How each outlet framed it

• The Irish Times — a Trinity graduate and the Irish teachers behind her.
• The Gleaner — the slow road from seven unpublished novels to a bestseller.
• The Irish News — two debuts on one night, with full judging panels.

What we don't know yet: sales figures. None of the three outlets gave numbers for either book.