YORKSHIRE - born Helen Dunmore carried off the first £30,000 Orange Prize for women novelists" last night. Runaway favourite Ms Dunmore pipped Marianne Wiggins, once the partner of Salman Rushdie, at the post and saw off four other illustrious authors with her novel, A Spell of Winter.
The new award has sparked controversy by restricting the largest prize for a single novel in Britain to women only. Last night, organisers had to defend it again.
Judges chair Ms Kate Mosse said of the critics: "What they are saying is they are not in favour of hundreds of thousands of pounds being put into literature or more books being sold. It's just a prize."
Actress Juliet Stevenson congratulated the writers, saying: "I have worked for 18 years as an actress. On only two occasions in that time have I ever performed a piece written by a woman.
She was not belittling men's work, she said, but women were hampered by the number of critics, editors and journalists who were men and favoured a male sensibility.
"It's as though the male sensibility remains a policeman at the door of success for women, who spend their time knocking at that door and negotiating with that policeman . . . a waste of vital time and creative energy.
"The Orange prize allows them to walk past waving blithely at the policeman and enter a residence of their own."
Other authors shortlisted were Briton Julia Blackburn, with The Book of Colour, and Americans Pagan Kennedy with Spinsters, Amy Tan with The Hundred Secret Senses, and Anne Tyler with Ladder of Years.
Ms Dunmore (43), a mother, began her career as a poet, then went into children's fiction.
With a style described as possessing "a lyrical, dreamy intensity", she tells the story of an abandoned brother and sister whose efforts to care for each other turn to intense passion.
Ms Mosse disclosed that Marianne Wiggins's novel, Eveless Eden, was the last to challenge Ms Dunmore. She said it was "extremely modern, incredibly fast it couldn't have been more different".
This year's Booker and Whitbread prizes were also won by women - the former by Pat Barker, the latter by Kate Atkinson.
Ms Dunmore said afterwards: "I wouldn't define myself as a children's writer, a poet or a novelist because I want to feel that we can push the boundaries of what we are.
Asked what she would do with her £30,000 prize, she said: "I suppose I shall spend it very easily."