The Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction 2025 has announced its shortlist of six exceptional books, celebrating voices that span across themes of nature, identity, resilience, and memory. In only its second year, this prestigious prize has already made a significant impact in showcasing powerful stories by women authors from around the globe.
Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction 2025 Shortlist
- Ocean’s Silent History: What the Wild Sea Can Be by Helen Scales
In her book What the Wild Sea Can Be: The Future of the World’s Ocean, marine biologist Helen Scales embarks on a journey into the evolutionary backstory of the ocean, using a thumb-sized fossilised slate as a poignant symbol. Stored in her desk drawer, this artifact — etched with the ancient forms of long-gone sea creatures — acts as a metaphor for deep oceanic memory.
Scales reflects on the dramatic transformations oceans have endured over millennia and poses the essential question: Will life in the ocean go on? Her inquiry weaves past marine evolution with present climate threats, making the book a resonant call for awareness and action.
- Bond Beyond Species: Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton
In Raising Hare, Chloe Dalton recounts a profound personal journey sparked by a chance encounter with a baby hare (leveret) during the COVID-19 lockdown. Once a jet-setting foreign policy adviser, Dalton’s life takes a transformative turn in the English countryside.
As she struggles to care for the fragile creature with little guidance, she gradually understands that hares, as wild animals, are not meant to be tamed. The narrative blossoms into a meditation on wildness, coexistence, and the boundaries of human intervention in nature. In one of her most striking reflections, Dalton writes: “To domesticate is to alter the nature of an animal… For innately wild animals such as the hare, a better way is to coexist.”
- A Life in Harmony and Disruption: A Thousand Threads by Neneh Cherry
Neneh Cherry’s memoir, A Thousand Threads, is a tapestry of identity, music, family, and rebellion. Born to a triad of extraordinary figures — artist Moki, musicians Don Cherry and Ahmadu Jah — Cherry’s unconventional upbringing in Sweden forms the heart of her story.
Her life swings between the currents of creativity, migration, and cultural fusion. The memoir includes a curated playlist, from John Coltrane’s ‘A Love Supreme’ to Cherry’s own anthems like ‘Buffalo Stance’. The story celebrates her artistic spirit and confronts the realities of drug use, fame, and resilience.
- Generosity Beyond Life: The Story of A Heart by Rachel Clarke
In The Story of A Heart, doctor Rachel Clarke explores the profound emotional dimensions of organ donation. The narrative follows the tragic yet life-affirming journey of Kiera and Max — two nine-year-olds connected by the gift of a heart.
Clarke calls organ donation an “act of radical generosity”, illustrating how death and life can coexist in acts of hope. Through the lens of medicine and empathy, the book reflects on grief, healing, and the human capacity for giving.
- Women in Transition: Private Revolutions by Yuan Yang
Yuan Yang’s Private Revolutions paints a vibrant portrait of four women in China navigating life after the 1990s economic and social transformations. The stories echo themes of resilience, rebellion, and reinvention, offering insights into how women have negotiated power, identity, and freedom in a rapidly modernising China.
Yang, herself a journalist, captures these lives with nuance and emotional depth, underlining the gendered realities of contemporary China.
- Remembering a Resistance Heroine: Agent Zo by Clare Mulley
In Agent Zo, historian Clare Mulley resurrects the forgotten story of Elżbieta Zawacka, a Polish World War II resistance fighter. Zawacka, who resisted both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, operated as a courier, soldier, and intelligence officer, and was one of the only female members of the Cichociemni (Silent Unseen) — the Polish elite paratroopers.
Mulley crafts a thrilling narrative of bravery and tenacity, ensuring that Zawacka’s name is etched into history and her contributions to wartime resistance are rightfully honoured.
Summary of the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction 2025 Shortlist
| Book Title |
Author |
Theme |
Highlight |
| What the Wild Sea Can Be |
Helen Scales |
Ocean history & future |
Fossil symbolising ocean’s evolutionary memory |
| Raising Hare |
Chloe Dalton |
Nature & human-wild interaction |
Story of nurturing a baby hare during the pandemic |
| A Thousand Threads |
Neneh Cherry |
Music memoir & identity |
Life story of singer shaped by creativity and rebellion |
| The Story of A Heart |
Rachel Clarke |
Medicine, grief & organ donation |
Narrative of heart transplant between two children |
| Private Revolutions |
Yuan Yang |
Women’s resilience in China |
Life journeys of four women post-1990s |
| Agent Zo |
Clare Mulley |
WWII resistance & forgotten heroines |
Story of Elżbieta Zawacka, Polish resistance fighter |
