It has been a pleasure following the Barbellion Prize race this year. In case you haven’t already seen the news, the winner of the inaugural award is Golem Girl by Riva Lehrer (my review).

It’s not often that my favourite from a literary prize list is also the judges’ pick, so I’m particularly pleased that my prediction came true. The full announcement is here. Here’s what two of the judges had to say:

Assistant Professor of Literature Dr Shahd Alshammari: “Golem Girl is a memoir that is infused with art, life, discrimination, love, self-love, and what it means to be vulnerable. Disability is on every page—and that is the type of literature we need.”

Cat Mitchell, Lecturer and Programme Leader of the Writing and Publishing degree at the University of Derby: “Golem Girl is a powerful and wide-reaching account of a life lived with disability. By interweaving her writing and art, Riva explores queerness, community, society’s fear of difference, and the often problematic representation of disabled bodies in art and medicine.”

Professor Tom Shakespeare FBA, Professor of Disability Research at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and an advisor to the Prize, added: “From Pope to Stevenson, Woolf to Plath, writers have lived with illness and disability for centuries. Now here comes exactly the right prize at the right time: disabled writers have been locked down far longer, and deserve far more recognition than they get. The Barbellion Prize deserves to succeed, and Riva Lehrer’s Golem Girl will put it on the map.”

To recap, the other three on the shortlist were:

• The Fragments of My Father by Sam Mills
• Sanatorium by Abi Palmer
• Kika & Me by Dr Amit Patel

It’s been quite the whirlwind reading and reviewing all four books as the first two review copies only arrived on the 28th of January. Most of my reviews got bunched up right in the 36 or so hours before the announcement, but I was relieved that I managed to get them all up in advance. The Prize basically has no budget, so when I approached Cat (who used to work in publicity at Penguin) and asked if I and a handful of other bloggers could get involved, I wasn’t sure if it would be a possibility. I was really grateful to the four publishers for being willing to supply review copies. I hope we have helped to get the word out there.

The Barbellion Prize is already accepting entries for the 2021 award (submissions close on 31 October; see the website for more information). On my wish list thus far are two excellent memoirs, Sanctuary by Emily Rapp Black, who has a prosthetic leg and lost her son to Tay-Sachs disease, and A Still Life by Josie George, who lives joyfully with chronic illness.

Other relevant 2021 releases I’m interested in getting hold of are: The Invention of Miracles: language, power, and Alexander Graham Bell’s quest to end deafness by Katie Booth, Places I’ve Taken My Body by Molly McCully Brown, What Doesn’t Kill You: A Life with Chronic Illness – Lessons from a Body in Revolt by Tessa Miller, and Waiting for Superman: One Family’s Struggle to Survive – and Cure – Chronic Fatigue Syndrome by Tracie White.

Have you been inspired to read any of the shortlisted books?