Trinity graduate Virginia Evans wins Women’s Prize for her debut novel

Virginia Evans has won the Women's Prize for Fiction 2026 for her novel The Correspondent

A Trinity College Dublin graduate has won the Women’s Prize for Fiction for the novel she wrote after attending the Irish university.

Virginia Evans attended Trinity on an MFA for creative writing when she was 32 and unpublished. Evans will receive a £30,000 prize (€34k) and a statuette known as the ‘Bessie’, created and donated by the late artist Grizel Niven, for her novel The Correspondent.

The Correspondent 

is about the power of connection and follows the letters and emails of a retired lawyer sent between 2012 and 2022. The judging panel described it as “exemplary”.

“It is no mean feat to write a life in letters, but Evans makes this feel effortless, asking the reader to consider the choices we make, whilst elevating an ordinary life in the most heartfelt of ways,” said Julia Gillard, chair of judges.

“The sheer skill required to render an emotionally resonant and engaging work in this format is spectacular. This is a novel that captured our hearts, and should be read and savoured by all.”

Gillard, former Prime Minister of Australia, was joined on the fiction judging panel by poet, novelist and essayist, Mona Arshi, author, presenter, poet and speaker, Salma El-Wardany, writer, podcaster, actor and comedian, Cariad Lloyd, and author, broadcaster and DJ, Annie Macmanus.

Evans previously told the Irish Examiner about her experience in Dublin and how it built the foundations of her debut’s success.

“I moved my family over, and life has never been better. We all felt so settled,” she said. “I gained my agent from it.”   

The Correspondent was shortlisted for the prize alongside Flashlight by Susan Choi,  Dominion by Addie E. Citchens,  The Mercy Step by Marcia Hutchinson,  Kingfisher by Rozie Kelly, and  Heart the Lover by Lily King.

The longlist had featured two Irish authors, Wendy Erskine and Kit de Waal. Erskine made the longlist for her novel  The Benefactors, and Kit de Waal secured her place for  The Best of Everything, however both authors did not progress to the shortlist.

The Women’s Prize for fiction is described as the greatest annual celebration of female creativity in the world.

The winner of the non-fiction prize is The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A People’s History of Afghanistan by Lyse Doucet.