Virago 2024 highlights
We thought 2023 – Virago’s 50th birthday – would be hard to beat, but we’re pleased to say there’s been plenty of cause for celebration this year too.
Prizes galore!
Our books have been recognised for a fantastic array of prizes this year:
Lost on Me by Veronica Raimo: longlisted for the International Booker Prize
8 Lives on a Century Old Trickster by Mirinae Lee: longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the 2024 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize, and winner of the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing
Ghostroots by ‘Pemi Aguda: shortlisted for the National Book Award and the Caine Prize for African Writing
The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue: shortlisted for a TikTok Book Award and the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction
Black Angels: The Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis by Maria Smilios: nominated for the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize
Mother Tongue: The Surprising History of Women’s Words by Jenni Nuttall: special commendation by the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize
Sandi Toksvig’s hilarious and heartfelt new novel Friends of Dorothy was an instant Sunday Times bestseller and she toured the book all over the country, often ending with everyone in the audience standing up and conducting Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ (truly!). It spent three weeks on the bestseller list and we bet it will be appearing in many Christmas stockings.
Our hard-working authors appeared at literary festivals all over the UK (and beyond),
including 5 x 15, Bridport, Budleigh Salterton, Cambridge, Charleston, Chelsea History Festival, Cheltenham, Edinburgh, Exhale Henley, Ilkley, Hay, Marlborough, Norwich, Sevenoaks, Stratford, Wilderness and Windsor.
Harriet Walter and Sonia Purnell accumulated many hundreds of train miles between them while promoting their books this autumn. Harriet took to stages around the country to talk about She Speaks!: What Shakespeare’s Women Might Have Said (here at the Manchester Literature Festival):
And Juliet Stevenson made her bookshop event debut by hosting a conversation with Sonia Purnell about Kingmaker: Pamela Churchill Harriman’s astonishing life of seduction, intrigue and power at Hatchard’s – just one of the many events which Sonia did:
Virago was established with the firm belief that books can change the world, and we were delighted to hear that Sophie Harman, author of Sick of It: The Global Fight for Women’s Health, read from her book at the Championing Reproductive Rights & Gender Equality Reception at the House of Lords. We hope they were listening closely.
Longtime Virago author and international icon Maya Angelou officially moved on to our Virago Modern Classics list this year, and we republished all seven volumes of her autobiography with stunning new jackets, beginning with the international bestseller and hugely influential book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
We also welcomed Caroline Blackwood onto the Virago Modern Classics list, with her pitch-black chiller The Fate of Mary Rose published in November to huge acclaim, including:
‘A devastating investigation of neurosis, hysteria and cruelty’ Observer
‘I read it with wide eyes and unsavoury glee’ Sunday Times
Sigrid Nunez’s novel What Are You Going Through was made into a film called The Room Next Door by acclaimed director Pedro Almodóvar. His first full-length film in English, it stars Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore and won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.
And last but not least: Margaret Atwood’s speculative epic Maddaddam has been turned into a ballet by Wayne McGregor!
