Cream liqueur replaces Orange as official sponsor of literary award, with three-year partnership starting in 2014
Creamy alcoholic drink Baileys has been announced as the new sponsor of the Women's Prize for Fiction, as Hilary Mantel goes into the final straight as the favourite to take this year's prize on Wednesday night.
Formerly backed by Orange, the £30,000 prize was supported this year by private donors, including Cherie Blair and Joanna Trollope, after the mobile services company said in May 2012 that it was ending its 17-year sponsorship of the high-profile award. From next year, the prize will be known as the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, as part of a new three-year partnership with the cream liqueur brand.
Founder Kate Mosse said that organisers were "delighted by the range of interest" from potential sponsors of the prize, but in the end the board "felt Baileys was the ideal choice as our new partners".
"We were impressed not only by the scale of their ambition, but also their passion for celebrating outstanding fiction by women and willingness to help in bringing the prize to ever wider audiences," she said.
The prize was set up to "celebrate excellence, originality and accessibility in women's writing from around the world", and goes to the best book by a female author written in English, with previous winners including Lionel Shriver, Barbara Kingsolver and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
The new sponsor was announced days before this year's winner is revealed on Wednesday . Mantel's Booker-winning novel Bring Up the Bodies was made 7/4 favourite to take the prize by the bookie William Hill, with AM Homes's May We Be Forgiven and Zadie Smith's NW both at 4/1. Former winner Kingsolver's climate change novel Flight Behaviour was at 5/1, Maria Semple's Where'd You Go Bernadette at 11/2 and Kate Atkinson's Life After Life at 6/1.
This is the third time Mantel has been shortlisted for the award, but – unlike Smith and Kingsolver – she has yet to win it.
Syl Saller, global innovation director at drinks company Diageo, said the brand was "delighted to come together with a partner that shares our passion for celebrating inspirational, modern, spirited women, in a true meeting of minds, and we are very much looking forward to what the future holds."
"The prize has really established itself within the world of literary culture as a wonderful platform for female talent and with this partnership we are committed to celebrating spirited women and their stories, which inspire and enrich lives around the world," Saller added.
via Books: Fiction | guardian.co.uk
0 comments:
Post a Comment