The AutHer Awards 2023 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, 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. The jury considered books by women published in India between December 2021 and November 2022.

The longlisted books are (in random order):

The chairs for the AutHer Awards jury consisted of actress-author Sonali Bendre Behl (Fiction); author Vikram Sampath (Non-Fiction); Priti Paul (Debut); and author Ranjit Lal (Children’s books).

More details about AutHer Awards 2023 longlisted books in Fiction category HERE.

Talking about his experience as Jury Chair (Non-Fiction), Vikram Sampath said, “It was truly an honour to head the non-fiction jury of the unique and one of its kind AutHer awards that celebrates the best of women writers in contemporary India. Jury members Ramesh Sharma, Prabha Chandran and I loved reading the wide and eclectic range of books in this category that ranged from biographies, history, memoirs to contemporary societal issues and politics. It was a tough task for us to zero in on the longlist.”

More details about AutHer Awards 2023 longlisted books in Non-fiction category HERE.

More details about AutHer Awards 2023 longlisted books in Debut category HERE.

The other jury members in various categories include: Navtej Sarna (Fiction), Jonathan Gil Harris (Fiction), Ramesh Sharma (Non-fiction), Prabha Chandran (Non-fiction), Lillete Dubey (Debut), Sunit Tandon (Debut), Swati Roy (Children’s category), and Dalbir K Madan (Children’s category).

Talking about his experience as a Jury Chair (Children’s books), Ranjit Lal said, “An eclectic collection of stories that should encourage children to bury their noses in the books! Mythology seems to be a favourite subject with children’s authors these days.”

More details about AutHer Awards 2023 longlisted books in Chidlren’s category HERE.

The books under consideration went through multiple layers of screening before reaching the final jury.

Vinita Dawra Nangia, Literary Director- AutHer Awards, said, “AutHer Awards is a wonderful celebration of the power of a woman who wields her pen (metaphorically speaking of course!) The increasing number of entries every year reassure us that more and more women are using writing as a means of expressing themselves and telling their stories. Writing is not about winning awards, but AutHer Awards is our way of encouraging and celebrating all women who write. May the writing women’s tribe grow!”

The AutHer Awards Shortlist will be announced this week.

The AutHer Awards winners will be announced at a grand ceremony in New Delhi on March 19, 2023. Cash prizes would be given to the top winners of all four categories and a Lifetime Achievement Award will be given to a woman author for her lasting contribution in the field of literature.

AutHer Awards was started in 2018 and since then it has seen four seasons of creativity and brilliance. The process of Women AutHer Awards involves inviting entries of books published in the previous year. The entries are submitted by both publishers and authors. The entries go through multiple levels of screenings before it reaches the Jury.

For more details on the awards, log on to: https://autherawards.in/