AM Homes, winner of the 2013 Women’s Prize for Fiction

The American author discusses how she wrote her winning novel in the shadow of 9/11, and why an all-female book prize is a good thing.

Sitting in a chaotic green room at the London South Bank centre, the American author AM Homes is surrounded by a buzz of journalists and PR representatives, eager to get her attention. Moments earlier, she was announced as the winner of the 2013 Women’s Prize for Fiction with her sixth novel, May We Be Forgiven. The book is a hilarious black comedy, in which a family is torn apart by one man’s rapid descent into murderous insanity.

For an author who excels in writing about the shocking (within the first thirty pages of May We be Forgiven, a fatal road accident, an affair, a divorce, and horrific domestic violence have all occurred), it’s now very much Homes’s turn to be shocked – by her first major literary prize.

“I didn’t think I could win,” she tells me, looking genuinely surprised. “I thought Hilary Mantel could win, I thought Barbara Kingsolver could win, I thought Zadie Smith could win, I thought Kate Atkinson could win, I thought Maria Semple could win – but not me!

“It feels fantastic. At the moment it’s still not real, but otherwise fantastic.”

Homes, 51, whose first name is Amy, is in favor of the all-female shortlist of the award, something that has provoked controversy in the past from some who have branded the prize as sexist.

Source: daily telegraph

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