PAST WINNER: 2025


Margaret Atwood, who took last year’s Freedom to Publish award, has long championed reading as an act of resistance, using her voice and platform to campaign for a fairer world. From The Handmaid’s Tale to Oryx and Crake to The Testaments, her immense body of work offers not only a powerful counter to societal challenges, but also a lens through which we can better understand them.


RUVEN AFANADOR


VIRGINIA ROBERTS GIUFFRE


TRADE AWARDS


The British Book Award for Freedom to Publish


This year, for the first time in its history, there are two winners of The British Book Award for Freedom to Publish. In 2025, how could there not be? The two winners are Virginia Roberts Giuffre for Nobody’s Girl (Transworld) and Sarah Wynn-Williams for Careless People (Pan Macmillan). Their stories may be different, but they represent the best of publishing, and the best of what the book trade can do to support silenced voices. Giuffre’s Nobody’s Girl is a testimony of her abuse


at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein, his partner Ghislaine Maxwell, and notable others, and of her fight for justice. She began work on her book with journalist Amy Wallace in 2020; it was published posthumously


following her death in April 2025. At no point could publication be guaranteed. On reading the manuscript, her editor, Transworld publisher Susanna Wadeson, said: “Virginia’s book puts victims back at the centre of our concerns. It was essential that we find a way to publish it and give her a platform – perhaps even more so after she had died.” The legal complexities remained even after it was


acquired by Transworld. The legal teams in the US and UK had to build a defence for publication that would stand up in court in all jurisdictions. Go-ahead was given just six weeks ahead of publication, when the UK legal team advised that, while risks remained, they could back publication internationally. It has


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