Virginia Evans: The Correspondent

Jack Edwards· Host0:00

[upbeat music] Hello, everyone, and welcome back to a very special series here on the Inklings Book Club podcast, where we are meeting all six of the shortlisted authors for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2026. The Women's Prize for Fiction is one of the most successful, influential, and popular literary prizes. It champions and amplifies women's voices and nurtures a global community of readers. Now, the prize was established in 1996 to highlight and remedy the imbalance in coverage, respect, and reverence given to women writers versus their male peers. The Women's Prize therefore created a platform for exceptional writing by women to shine. And so the prize is awarded annually to the author of the best full-length novel of the year written in English and published in the UK by a female writer. The winner receives £30,000 and also a bronze statuette called Bessie. Today, for this episode of the Inklings Book Club podcast, we will be meeting Virginia Evans. Virginia is the author of The Correspondent. This has been one of the most talked about books of the past year. In fact, it has spent 24 weeks in the New York Times bestseller charts, with eight of those weeks at number one, and it is not showing signs of slowing down. In fact, it's being adapted into a movie by Lionsgate starring Jane Fonda, and people continue to fall in love with this book and its unforgettable main character. So in The Correspondent,