Ali Smith has been named this year’s winner of the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, for her sixth novel How To Be Both.

Chair of Judges Shami Chakrabarti said: ‘Ancient and modern meet and speak to each other in this tender, brilliant and witty novel of grief, love, sexuality and shape-shifting identity.’

Borrowing from painting’s fresco technique to make an literary double-take, How To Be Both is a fast-moving genre-bending conversation between forms, times, truths and fictions. Two tales – one of a renaissance artist of the 1460s and one of a child of the 1960s – twist into a singular yarn.

Our reviewer writes: ‘Smith’s prose is sly and slippery, witty and arch. … How To Be Both is full of fascinating, playful moments.’ (Read the full review here.)

As winner, the Scottish author was awarded the £30,000 prize and the ‘Bessie’, a limited edition bronze figurine. Both are anonymously endowed.

The shortlisted included five other authors: Rachel Cusk (Outline), Laline Paull (The Bees), Kamila Shamsie (A God in Every Stone), Anne Tyler (A Spool of Blue Thread), and Sarah Waters (The Paying Guests).

Find out more about Smith’s win here.