A judge for a Scottish literary prize has stepped down from her post after accusing her fellow judges of not reading all the books on the award’s shortlist.
Literary critic Lesley McDowell quit the judging panel for the Saltire Society Literary Awards after the judges gave the Fiction Book of the Year prize to a man and not one of the shortlisted women, the Scotsman reports.
According to McDowell, two of the judges said they didn’t finish reading the nominated Ducks, Newburyport, Lucy Ellmann’s 1,000-page novel, which was the winner of this year’s prestigious Goldsmiths Prize.
The prize instead went to Ewan Morrison’s Nina X. “A woman was being overlooked, her book not even finished,” McDowell told the Guardian.
“There were three women on the shortlist who had all written women [characters],” she said to the Scotsman. “One of the three was Lucy, whose book had been shortlisted for two national prizes and described as a masterpiece. My question was, ‘What else does a woman have to have to get you to vote for her?’”
Sam Jordison, the publisher of Galley Beggar Press, which released the U.K. version of Ellmann’s book, told the Guardian that he admired “truth-tellers” like McDowell.
Jordison, who previously voiced his displeasure that Ellmann didn’t win this year’s Booker Prize, said, “It’s fine not to win when procedures have been followed properly and reasonably. But when they haven’t, it feels unjust … I’m still hopeful someone will tell us what the hell happened with the Booker, and she’s setting a brave example.”
A spokesperson for the Saltire Society award denied McDowell’s allegations, telling the Guardian that “all judges carefully examined all texts submitted for the award.”
Michael Schaub is an Austin, Texas–based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
