Following a competition and a public vote, The Booker Prize has named its statuette “Iris,” after Iris Murdoch. Murdoch was nominated for the prize seven times and won for The Sea, The Sea in 1978. Out of 800 submissions, the public voted on a shortlist of names—Bernie, Beryl, Iris, Minerva, Janina and Calliope—with “Bernie” receiving the most votes. The name would have honored both 2019 winner Bernardine Evaristo, who was the first Black woman to win, as well as Bernice Rubens, who was the first woman to win in 1970. However, they write in a release that Evaristo “felt it would be more appropriate to pay tribute to one of the great writers from the Booker’s past instead.”
Evaristo said, “I’m surprised and flattered that the name Bernie was nominated by readers in the Booker Prizes’ trophy competition and that it received the most votes in the public poll, in recognition of both Bernice Rubens, the first woman to win the Booker, and myself. But as the only living author on the list, I feel it would be more fitting for the honor to go to a writer who is no longer with us. It’s wonderful to see that it will be named after the great Iris Murdoch instead.”
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