Interview: Sophie Gee – 2026 Stella Prize Chair of Judges
An interview with academic, author and podcast host, Sophie Gee.
What role do you believe literary awards like the Stella Prize play in sparking conversations and shaping the literary canon?
That shiny sticker on the front of a book jacket holds so much cultural capital, for writers and readers alike. Literary awards help put books and the riches of storytelling into everyday conversations. Nine out of ten conversations I have about books start with someone asking what I think about a big international literary award. What this says to me is that people care more about books and storylines than they realize. And I think people also want to know what “expert” readers think about what makes a book important, and why. Whether readers respond to big prize announcements with excitement or scepticism it tells me that books are still important as conduits for big cultural stories. Books remain a crucial gauge of what preoccupies us and worries us most about contemporary society. Plus literary awards connect writing in the present to literary histories. We’re not just reading a single book – we’re reading all the books and stories a writer has been shaped and influenced by. Even when judges pay attention to a work of literature because it’s avant-garde and boundary-breaking, we’re still actively engaging with what the rules are and what counts as mainstream literary culture. Being the Chair of Judges for a major literary award is becoming immersed in the imaginative life of the present, revisiting imaginative lives from the past and of course shaping what’s to come.
Being the Chair of Judges for a major literary award is becoming immersed in the imaginative life of the present, revisiting imaginative lives from the past and of course shaping what’s to come.
What excites you most about being part of a prize that elevates women’s and non-binary voices in literature?
It’s deeply moving to read women’s and non-binary stories. They connect me and all readers with long, rich, often surprising histories of writing from the margins, where voices and identities who have been pushed to the edges of public life find ways to speak honestly and searchingly about themselves and the women around them. Women and non-binary folks have historically been expected to conform to quite rigid expectations about behaviour and life-choices, so their writing always reflects a brave, visionary determination to speak truthfully and find freedom in social and political circumstances that often aren’t cooperating with freedom and truth.
What is a book by a woman or non-binary writer that you’d recommend to others?
Women have been writing formal narrative stories for 4,000 years, and telling stories and singing songs for millennia before that. So the riches to choose from are almost unlimited. I’m going to choose Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. It’s a small masterpiece, with a story that spans 300 years of European history, in which Woolf’s swashbuckling protagonist changes from male to female and back again. It’s packed with romance, sex, seafaring, ice-skating and so much more.
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