A novel made entirely of letters just won the Women's Prize
Virginia Evans wrote the whole thing in a year, mostly during Covid, without planning to show anyone.
Key takeaway: Virginia Evans wrote a whole novel out of letters and just won the Women's Prize for it. Here's what her story is quietly telling the rest of us.
By Dear Sarah · · Updated
There's a story I keep thinking about this week, and I want to tell you about it because I think it's the kind of thing that lives quietly in the back of your mind for a while and shifts something.
On June 11, at a summer party in London, Virginia Evans won the 2026 Women's Prize for Fiction for her debut novel, The Correspondent. The book is made entirely of letters. Emails, notes, actual mailed letters. Written by a 73-year-old retired lawyer named Sybil to the people in her life. That's it. That's the whole book. And it beat out a shortlist of writers with much longer resumes.
Here's the part that undid me a little. The Correspondent is Evans' first published novel. But it's her eighth novel. She wrote seven before it that never made it out into the world. She wrote this one during Covid, in about a year, in order, without a plan. She has said in interviews that she didn't originally intend to show it to anyone.
Why this one landed with me
A lot of women I know are sitting on something they've made in private. A journal that's really a memoir. A folder of unsent drafts. A voice memo they keep meaning to turn into something. Or just a version of themselves they haven't let anyone see yet.
And there's this quiet story we tell ourselves, that the thing has to be for someone, or good enough for someone, before it's allowed to exist. Evans wrote seven whole novels that nobody bought. Then she wrote one for herself, in a hard year, one letter at a time, and it turned out to be the one that broke through.
I'm not saying that's a rule. I'm saying it's a permission slip. Making the thing is the point. What happens after is a separate conversation.
Writing is about learning to pay attention and to communicate what is going on.
That's Anne Lamott, from Bird by Bird, and it's what I kept hearing in my head reading about Evans. The novel is just one woman, paying attention to her own life, and writing what she sees to the people she loves.
One thing to try today
Write one letter this week. Not a text. An actual letter or a long email. To someone real. Tell them one specific thing you've noticed about them or about your life lately. Don't edit it into a performance. Just send it.
You don't have to win a prize with your voice. You just have to use it, on purpose, to one person who deserves to hear it.
Quote to sit with:
"Writing is about learning to pay attention and to communicate what is going on." — Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird
💌 Sarah
Sources
- Virginia Evans and Lyse Doucet named Women's Prize 2026 winners — The Bookseller
- In conversation with Virginia Evans — Women's Prize
- 'The Correspondent': Virginia Evans' best-selling debut is a novel in letters — WBUR Here & Now
- Anne Lamott on Writing and Why Perfectionism Kills Creativity — The Marginalian