AutHer Awards 2025 Longlist announced

The AutHer Awards 2025 Longlists for best women authors in Fiction, Non-Fiction, Children’s Literature, and Debut were announced today by a panel of eminent judges. The Times of India received a whopping 2000 plus entries submitted by both publishers and individual authors for the coveted national award for women writers, the first of its kind in India.
The AutHer Awards- a joint venture between JK Paper and Times of India – is a celebration of women authors who have added value and creativity to the literary space. Started in 2018, this is the sixth edition of AutHer Awards. The jury considered books by women published in India between December 2023 and November 2024.
Checkout the complete AutHer Awards 2025 Long list in different categories here




*The lists have been arranged alphabetically.
The esteemed jury for the AutHer Awards 2025 in various categories are:
1. Fiction: Esther David, Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi, Trisha Das
2. Non-fiction: Ganesh N. Devy, Manu S Pillai, Shranaya Bhattacharya
3. Debut: Anita Nair, Sutapa Basu, Suvir Saran
4. Best children's literature: Priya Dutt, Anasuya Vaidya, Devashish Makhija
The books under consideration went through multiple layers of screening before reaching the jury.
Jaya Bhattacharji Rose, Literary Director - AutHer Awards 2025, said, “Today, we are in the second Industrial Revolution. Technological developments are of a magnitude that it is humanly impossible to keep pace with. Information disruption is here to stay. Fortunately, the age-old craft of writing, putting down words on paper, ensures that ideas will remain fixed in time and will also pass on to coming generations. There will be a continuity that only words on paper can assure us of. For most women, time is a flexible entity which they have to make their own. Basically, find the time to write. It requires mental agility, creativity, and patience to compose one’s thoughts, edit, and then make public. A human feat that no machine can ever replace — at least for the foreseeable future. Yet, as is evident in the wide range of writing that the AutHer Awards 2025 longlist showcases, women writers have an extraordinary range of topics to reflect upon. The different genres like literary fiction, historical accounts, memoirs, war reporting, art books, short stories, and young adult literature exemplify the rich landscape of Indian publishing. We hope that you — the reader— will enjoy discovering the books as much as the incredible juries have had in putting together this fine selection of works by talented women writers.”
The AutHer Awards Shortlist will be announced on March 12, 2025.
The AutHer Awards winners will be announced at a grand ceremony in New Delhi on March 21, 2025. Cash prizes would be given to the top winners of all four categories and along with the winners of two other categories: The Popular Choice Award, and the Best Manuscript Award for aspiring authors. A Lifetime Achievement Award will also be given to a woman author for her lasting contribution in the field of literature.
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