LONDON (AP) 鈥� Books about the dizzying impact of the internet and artificial intelligence are among finalists for a new book prize that aims to help fix the gender imbalance in nonfiction publishing.
The shortlisted six books for the inaugural , announced on Wednesday, include Canadian author-activist a plunge into online misinformation, and British journalist Madhumita Murgia鈥檚 鈥淐ode-Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI.鈥�
The 30,000 pound ($38,000) award is a sister to the 29-year-old and is open to female English-language writers from any country in any nonfiction genre.
The finalists also include autobiographical works 鈥� poet Safiya Sinclair鈥檚 鈥淗ow to Say Babylon: A Jamaican Memoir鈥� and British art critic Laura Cumming鈥檚 鈥淭hunderclap: A Memoir of Art and Life and Sudden Death.鈥�
Rounding out the list are British author Noreen Masud鈥檚 travelogue-memoir 鈥淎 Flat Place,鈥� and Harvard history professor Tiya Miles鈥� 鈥淎ll That She Carried,鈥� a history of American enslavement told through one Black family鈥檚 keepsake.
British historian Suzannah Lipscomb, who is chairing the judging panel, said that 鈥渢he readers of these books will never see the world 鈥� be it through art, history, landscape, politics, religion or technology 鈥� the same again.鈥�
The winners of both nonfiction and fiction prizes will be announced at a ceremony in London on June 13.
The prize was set up in response to a gender imbalance in the book world, where men buy more nonfiction than women 鈥� and write more prize-wining nonfiction books
The company Nielsen Book Research found in 2019 that while women bought 59% of all the books sold in the United Kingdom, men accounted for just over half of adult nonfiction purchases.
Prize organizers say that in 2022, only 26.5% of nonfiction books reviewed in Britain鈥檚 newspapers were by women, and male writers dominated established nonfiction writing prizes.
The Associated Press
