Failure was her thing: Women's Prize winner Virginia Evans on her long journey to success
Debut novelist Virginia Evans, winner of this year's Women's Prize, shares her story of overcoming thousands of rejections and seven unpublished novels before achieving literary acclaim with 'The Correspondent'.
This year's Women's Prize winner, American debut novelist Virginia Evans, has revealed that her success was far from instant. Her prize-winning novel "The Correspondent", an epistolary work, was written in a closet (after removing her husband's clothes) over nine months during the 2020 pandemic. Evans, who turned 40 earlier this month, has been writing for two hours daily from 5am to 7am since age 19, completing seven unpublished novels before "The Correspondent".
Over the years, she received "thousands of rejections" and sent letters to every literary agency in Manhattan before trying London and finally finding Canadian agent Hilary McMahon. Even then, the novel was not an easy sell. "It took months, and there was a lot of silence and a lot of 'nos'," she said. "It just felt like rejection and ultimately failure was my thing. And it was for a long time – until it wasn't."
During that period, she worked various "paycheck jobs" – for a lawyer, a surgeon, as a barista – while raising her two children without childcare. At one point, she considered law school but never gave up writing. The novel's structure was inspired by Helene Hanff's "84 Charing Cross Road", which she read in one day during lockdown.
"The Correspondent" follows Sybil Van Antwerp, a 73-year-old correspondent, played in the film adaptation by Jane Fonda. Evans describes the book as about grief and disappointment, but with an uplifting quality that resonates with readers. The novel's success means she can now write full-time, though she still works in two-to-three-hour stretches after her children go to school. She has "come out of the closet" – now having a room of her own, a little porch – and is well into a new novel about making a movie.
