Yael van der Wouden and Rachel Clarke win Women’s Prize book awards

LONDON (AP) - Dutch writer Yael van der Wouden won the Women's Prize for Fiction on Thursday for her debut novel "The Safekeep," a story of repressed emotion and historical memory in the Netherlands after World War II.

British physician Rachel Clarke won the Women's Prize for Nonfiction for exploring the human drama behind organ donation in "The Story of a Heart."

Both prizes carry a 30,000 pound ($41,000) purse and are open to female English-language writers from any country.

Last year Van der Wouden became the first Dutch writer to be a finalist for the prestigious Booker Prize for "The Safekeep."

Author Kit de Waal, who chaired the fiction judging panel, called the book "a masterful blend of history, suspense and historical authenticity" that reveals "an aspect of war and the Holocaust that has been, until now, mostly unexplored in fiction."

Clarke works as a palliative care doctor, and "The Story of a Heart" traces a transplant through the true stories of two children: one killed in a car crash, and one who could be saved by a new heart. Journalist Kavita Puri, who led the judges, said "Clarke's writing is authoritative, beautiful and compassionate. The research is meticulous, and the storytelling is expertly crafted."

Previous winners of the fiction prize, founded in 1996, include Zadie Smith, Tayari Jones and Barbara Kingsolver.

Last year, award organizers launched a companion nonfiction award to help rectify an imbalance in publishing. In 2022, only 26.5% of nonfiction books reviewed in Britain's newspapers were by women, and male writers dominated established nonfiction writing prizes.

The winner of last year's inaugural nonfiction prize was Naomi Klein for her delve into online misinformation, "Doppelganger.”

To mark the prize's 30th birthday, writer Bernardine Evaristo was awarded a 100,000-pound ($136,000) Outstanding Contribution Award for her "transformative impact on literature and her unwavering dedication to uplifting under-represented voices." Evaristo won the Booker Prize in 2019, and was a Women's Prize finalist the following year, for "Girl, Woman, Other."