The 2025 Comedy Women in Print Prize (CWIP) winners have been announced.
‘What unites all these novels’, says Prize-Founder Helen Lederer, ‘is that these are brave modern voices questioning key issues (marriage, religion, sexual desire, ageing, weirdness) with wit and warmth. We meet flawed people trying to do good things to hilarious effect. No topic, it seems, is too dangerous to debate in female comic fiction. The confidence and daring is off the scale.
‘The female comic novel has truly grown up! A generation of women who found their creative voices in the 1980s and 1990s (Nussaibah was born in 1986!) are now in charge of steering the ship.
‘Eight years after I founded the prize, I never thought we’d have a hilarious winning novel about a queer Muslim academic deradicalising Isis brides. It truly feels like a contender for today’s Modern British Novel. Proof, if any were needed, that intelligent audacious female writing wins out.’
British Academic and former UN peacebuilding consultant, Nussaibah Younis is the unanimous winner of the CWIP Published Novel award with her shockingly funny debut Fundamentally, chosen by a panel of judges that included Kerry Godliman, Ingrid Oliver and Ranvir Singh. Also shortlisted for the Women’s Prize, Fundamentally is a hilarious and unflinching, modern British novel which questions faith with razor-sharp humour, exploring sexuality and desire.
The runner-up in the Published Novel Award is Holly Gramazio’s Husbands, an astutely observed take on the commitment-phobic Tinder generation. Gramazio who previously worked in the gaming industry for 15 years uses her experience to satirise modern concepts of choice.
In a heartfelt tribute to the late Jilly Cooper, CWIP has inaugurated the CWIP Jilly Cooper Award. Jilly pioneered brilliant bawdy writing and journalism and championed younger women writers. Fittingly Sara Pascoe’s debut novel Weirdo receives the first CWIP Jilly Cooper Award. A daring candid look at a young woman lurching through life, Weirdo combines comedic set pieces with real pathos – even when played for laughs. We know that Jilly would approve.
For the first time, the final judging process for the 2025 Published Novel was opened up to readers in the form of a new PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARD. The winner of the CWIP People’s Choice Award will be announced at the event: Votes were curated through the CWIP website on a one person one vote basis – winning a cash prize from Arthur H Stockwell Limited.
Honorary Awards
CWIP Honorary Game Changer Award will be accepted by Tameka Empson – in recognition of Tameka’s work which sits across all areas of comedic input from writing, curating a TV series, comedic acting and ‘being herself’ but always with wit at the forefront.
Unpublished Novel
Natalie Willbe is the winner of the CWIP Unpublished Novel award, scooping her first publishing deal with Hera Books. Her novel Music for the Samosa Generation explores intergenerational relationships and how to balance love and duty, with wry, relatable humour and warmth. The judging panel, which included Janet Ellis, Liz Hoggard, poet Malaika Kegode and Dawn Butler MP, championed this hugely relatable novel all the way to a career-changing and highly prized book deal.
Runners up in the Unpublished Novel award are The Way of Nellie May by Rachel Sambrooks which sees a young recluse busting her grandmother out of her care home – carrying on the theme of multi-generational relationships and the value of older women. Sambrooks wins a place on an MA by ‘Research in Creative Writing’ or a writing mentorship from the University of Hertfordshire.
Fellow Runner-Up, author Jeananne Craig wins the offer of a place on the online MA in Comedy Writing at Falmouth University, which is the first of its kind in the country, or a writing mentorship. Set in Belfast and Dublin, Craig’s novel Some News is a poignant exploration of family, full of honest humour and Irish craic.
The CWIP Commendation for Comedic Culture is awarded to Generation X by Dara Lutes, an exploration of heartbreak, intergenerational feminism and the messy reality of growing older without growing up, winning an editing and design package from package publisher Fuzzy Flamingo.
The winner of the Self-Published Novel award, a brand-new CWIP category for 2025, to celebrate the agency of women authors, is A Perfect Year by Ruth Foster. Judges included Lesley Joseph, Nina Wadia and Llewella Gideon. Through ‘round robin’ letters, A Perfect Year is a brilliantly hilarious study of one-upmanship between a group of friends that plays with readers’ expectations. Ruth Foster will receive a package from hybrid book publisher Atmosphere Press.
Self-Published Novel category judge and former CWIP winner Silvia Saunders commented: ‘There’s something quite different and playful about this format of letters that works in the context of a comic novel – I winced and chuckled in turn.’
The runner-up of the Self-Published Novel award is The Stand-Up Mam by Kay Wilson about an overlooked mother who decides to try out stand-up comedy with hilarious but chaotic results in a story packed with a powerful rage.
The Comedy Women in Print Prize 2025 Awards for the Published Novel category:
WINNER Sponsored by ALCS
Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
RUNNER-UP Sponsored by ed public relations
The Husbands by Holly Gramazio (Chatto & Windus)
DAME JILLY COOPER AWARD Sponsored by Northwich Literary Festival
Weirdo by Sara Pascoe (Faber & Faber)
The Comedy Women in Print Prize 2025 Awards for the Unpublished Novel category:
WINNER Sponsored by Hera Books
Music for the Samosa Generation by Natalie Willbe
RUNNER-UP Sponsored by University of Hertfordshire
The Way of Nellie May by Rachel Sambrooks
RUNNER-UP Sponsored by Falmouth University
Some News by Jeananne Craig
CWIP Commendation for Comedic Culture Sponsored by Fuzzy Flamingo
Generation X by Dara Lutes
The Comedy Women in Print Prize 2025 Awards for the Self-Published Novel category:
WINNER Sponsored by Atmosphere Press
A Perfect Year by Ruth Foster
RUNNER-UP Sponsored by Gloria
The Stand-Up Mam by Kay Wilson
The CWIP Prize was launched by actor, author and stand-up comedian HELEN LEDERER in 2019, as a literary platform to increase exposure for witty voices in comedy fiction, and as a way of celebrating fresh and established talent.
This year’s judges of CWIP’s published category include stand-up comedian and actor Kerry Godliman; Ranvir Singh, award-winning presenter of ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Lorraine and Real Stories: actor, performer and writer Chizzy Akudolu; actor, comedian and writer Ingrid Oliver; TV fashion journalist, writer, style advisor, television presenter and author Susannah Constantine; fiction author and Independent columnist Chrissie Manby.
Unpublished judges include Dawn Butler MP (formerly Parliamentary Secretary for the Cabinet Office and Minister for Young Citizens and Youth Engagement); actor and novelist Janet Ellis; arts journalist Liz Hoggard; award-winning writer, performer, theatre-maker and creative producer Malaika Kegode; Co-Founder and Executive Publisher of Hera Books Keshini Naidoo; and historical novelist Jennifer Young, Dean of the Faculty of Business and Design and Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Falmouth University.
Self-published judges include actor, comedian and writer Llewella Gideon; award winning actor Nina Wadia OBE; writer, MP and disability rights activist Alison Hume; stage and screen actor Lesley Joseph; book reviewer and MD of LoveReading Deborah Maclaren; and Silvia Saunders, whose debut novel, Homesick, was winner of the CWIP Unpublished Prize in 2023.
Pictured: Helen Lederer with Tameka Empson and Ranvir Singh
