Barbara Kingsolver has won the 2023 Women’s Prize for Fiction for her novel Demon Copperhead. With this win, Kingsolver becomes the first double winner for the Women’s Prize for Fiction in its 28 year history. Her first win was in 2010 for her novel Lacuna.

Demon Copperhead: a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Demon befriends us on this, his journey through the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.

Inspired by the unflinching truth-telling of David Copperfield, Kingsolver enlists Dickens’ anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead gives voice to a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can’t imagine leaving behind.

Chair of Judges Louise Minchin, said of the novel: 'Barbara Kingsolver has written a towering, deeply powerful and significant book. In a year of outstanding fiction by women, we made a unanimous decision on Demon Copperhead as our winner. Brilliant and visceral, it is storytelling by an author at the top of her game. We were all deeply moved by Demon, his gentle optimism, resilience and determination despite everything being set against him.

An exposé of modern America, its opioid crisis and the detrimental treatment of deprived and maligned communities, Demon Copperhead tackles universal themes – from addiction and poverty, to family, love, and the power of friendship and art – it packs a triumphant emotional punch, and is a novel that will withstand the test of time.'

Demon Copperhead was shortlisted alongside five other brilliant works: Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris, Pod by Laline Paull, Fire Rush by Jacqueline Crooks, Trespasses by Louise Kennedy, and The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell.

As the winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, Kingsolver receives prize money of £30,000 and a limited edition bronze known as a ‘Bessie’, created and donated by the artist Grizel Niven. Both are anonymously endowed. This is the second major award win for Demon Copperhead, with Kingsolver also recently winning the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.