The Women’s Prize for Fiction is a wonderful opportunity to showcase both debut and mature authors and the 2023 shortlist reflects this opportunity. Recently, I declared my dispute with the 2023 Women’s Prize For Fiction winner. I read patiently, letting the authors teach me their craft after which I put the shortlisted works through the Women’s Prize 3 criteria sieve: Originality, Accessibility and Excellence. All of this brings me to this moment when I share my winner of the prize…

I continue to opine that Demon Copperhead is NOT the winner of the 2023 Women’s Prize For Fiction. First and foremost, author, Barbara Kingsolver, adapted a story written by a man, Charles Dickens, and used David Copperfield, as a template, inspiration and gimmick to pay homage to Dickens as well as portray the opioid epidemic through a child’s point of view. This is a women’s prize and not a women’s prize for endorsing a fantastic male author (who will hopefully not disappear into antiquity). If the panel were strictly adhering to the prize guidelines, they might not consider this work at all. I’m not.

Other things make Demon Copperhead NOT the winner include that it was 786 pages and overwritten by at least 100 pages with no consideration given to readers who could get this story in much less page count. This book kind of felt like it was over-purposed and gratuitous and other books addressed this topic. If I were to stack 2 such books, Dopesick by Beth Macy and Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance, I’d still tally a shorter page count and perhaps more accurately told…

Finally, the opioid epidemic is an important story to tell and retell. The mishandling of such a powerful drug has wiped out so many Appalachian communities and it’s a horrible tragedy that citizens in the United States should never forget. However, the opioid epidemic is a very isolated story and is not a universal story of this moment while other titles on the shortlist are more easily accessible and possible for people living on continents and countries spanning the globe today. Relevance matters and universal relevance matters more.

Barbara Kingsolver took 2023 Women’s Prize For Fiction prize, but didn’t need it and other writers did and probably still do. Many people in the United States follow the awards that take place here or just follow Oprah, Jenna and/or Reese and this leaves out at least half the authors and titles on the shortlist from being discovered. Kingsolver has published more books and received more awards than the 16 books on the long list let alone the shortlisted works in queue for the prize winner. So who should win and why?

Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris is my WINNER of the 2023 Women’s Prize For Fiction. All the pens, all 5 🖊️🖊️🖊️🖊️🖊️ and more! It is Original, Accessible and Excellent in all ways. Morris really thinks of her reader: a person who may or may not have lost their freedom. She also stays deeply focused on her mission to tell the story of Sarajevo and does not stray while using such wonderful tools to immerse her readers. It is not overwritten in any way. I hope to read her again!

Morris imagined a stunningly beautiful and tragic retelling of Sarajevo during the 1990s as well as a meditation on freedom, nationalism, and the challenges cultural intersection brings within a changing, small country and a fragile young democracy. Morris uses an artist’s perspective to portray and experience the machinations of war as part of everyday life. Quite frankly, there hasn’t been a physical war on US soil in 200+ years, and post 911 up to this moment, tensions among citizens have becoming increasingly agitated—TikTok and all… Other countries cannot say similarly and having fallen into conditions of war can extract benefit from a work like Black Butterflies if allowed to exist in the hands of common citizens.

Currently, people in the States and other democracies large and small are inexperienced and distracted and so there is great potential value deliverable to a reader by Black Butterflies. Why? Because Morris immerses her readers into the actual falling and failing infrastructures as war invades an innocent city of people like cancer eats sugar. Things fall apart, people fall together, bonds are deepened while others flee. In exile expats and consumers of news and watch stories of war however edited using varied interpretation and translations by groups with potentially nefarious intentions that sway, polarize, radicalize and motivate citizens, allies and onlookers to act and react to what they see.

This book is a truthful and cautionary tale to everywhere where Democracy exists in any part and even in places where Democracy is amended and staged for obedient or scared citizens. Everyone can benefit by reading Black Butterlies because the signs of attacks on freedom are always the same.The manipulative tactics utilized by nationalists, religious conservatives, extremists, supremacists, etc. are always the same. People have displaced the impetus to look up and out at what’s happening around them and they deeply inexperienced intellectually, emotionally and physically disconnected and paralyzed from personal and political ethics. It’s like the world is one big Middle School. Not good and/or not best…

Solid literary fiction can immerse and facilitate emotional connection, re- and expanded visualization. Literary fiction can be instructive or interrogatory enabling a reader to discover or practice their unique sense of sociopolitical understanding and policies as they shift or fracture. Morris lets reads regard when war disrupts life, community, and the world, as well as what to do, what can be done and why.

Black Butterflies delivers this process as Sarajevo falls, is torn apart, people are victimized, genocide happens, AND people survive. People love their country from both the inside and the outside, but no country can stand without the aid of its people, governance, allies and all. Most people in the United States missed Sarajevo in the 90s and the intensity of this horrible scar on humanity. People are missing the wars flooding news, politics and entertainment right now because they can. Those who don’t look away look everywhere vetted and not are protesting and trying to castrate our government when really the world cannot handle another world war, a nuclear one, and our government knows this too.

Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris is my winner of the 2023 Women’s Prize For Fiction. It’s a story with value for everyone everywhere all at once. It is also beautifully written. Readers can see and smell the landscapes of Sarajevo, Bosnia, and the surrounding area. They can watch art be created out of traditional oil paint, canvas and charcoal and see it evolve into mixed media made from explosive debris, fragments of home and bullet casings. Readers will see news shut down, libraries and histories be burned, landmarks destroyed, homes squatted in, attestations for travel be demanded and rejected. Readers need to be close to these things because it can happen if people continue to be distracted and non-participatory in Democracy, citizenship, and authority. It wins, Priscilla Morris wins because her book is absolutely necessary.

Thank you for those of you who have shared your precious time and allowed me to share my experience in positioning myself as a Literary Judge. The conversations I’ve had with people off this platform have been tremendous and expansive so much so that I am doing it again, because the 2024 Women’s Prize For Fiction shortlist has just been announced. I am back to my Bookisshh life in the next few posts and will shore up my decision by the year end.