‘Failure was my thing’: Women’s prize winner Virginia Evans on her long journey to success
Article excerpt
Virginia Evans collected thousands of rejection letters over two decades before winning the Women's Prize for Fiction with her debut novel. The American author's perseverance through years of publishing industry setbacks offers a stark counterpoint to overnight-success narratives. Evans credits her eventual breakthrough to refusing to abandon her writing despite constant disappointment, transforming what she calls her "thing", failure, into the foundation of her literary arrival. Her trajectory underscores both the brutal economics of publishing and the particular obstacles women writers face gaining recognition.
The American author received ‘thousands of rejections’ over two decades before finally hitting gold with her first published novel
Just as I am about to interview this year’s Women’s prize winner, debut American novelist Virginia Evans, at the party on a drizzly evening in a leafy London square, we are interrupted because someone wants to congratulate her. The fan is Richard Curtis.
A warm-hearted weepy with a sprinkling of gentle humour, Evans’s prize-winning novel The Correspondent is prime Curtis material. In fact, he is too late. “I think he just wants to be my friend,” Evans jokes modestly, Notting Hill is her favourite movie of all time. A film of The Correspondent is already in the pipeline with Jane Fonda playing 73-year-old Sybil Van Antwerp, the crotchety correspondent of the title. Evans will be one of the producers and will have a cameo appearance, “walking a dog or something”.
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