Neneh Cherry’s memoir A Thousand Threads is on the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction 2025 longlist announced today.
The Women’s Prize is awarded annually to a female author of any nationality for the best original full-length novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom in the preceding year. Previous winners include Zadie Smith, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Ali Smith.
In 2024, they introduced the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction to celebrate excellence, originality, and accessibility in Non-Fiction written by women. Tiya Miles and Safiya Sinclair made it to the shortlist for the award won by Naomi Klein.
The 2025 jury comprises journalist, author, and broadcaster Kavita Puri who chairs alongside writer and broadcaster, Dr Leah Broad, whose work focuses on women’s cultural history; novelist and critic, Elizabeth Buchan; writer and environmental academic Dr Elizabeth-Jane Burnett; and author and writer of The Hyphen newsletter on Substack, Emma Gannon. This jury announced the longlist of 16 books going to the next stage in the competition on Wednesday.
“What unites these diverse titles, that boast so many different disciplines and genres, is the accomplishment of the writing, the originality of the storytelling and the incisiveness of the research. Here are books that provoke debate and discussion, that offer insight into new experiences and perspectives, and that bring overlooked stories back to life and recognition. Amongst this stellar list, there are also reads that expertly steer us through the most pressing issues of our time, show the resilience of the human spirit, alongside others that elucidate the dangers of unchecked power, the consequence of oppression and the need for action and defiance,” said Kavita Puri.
Neneh Cherry’s memoir A Thousand Threads, the only writer of African descent there, comes with the following blurb;
Born in Sweden in 1964, Neneh Cherry’s father Ahmadu was a musician from Sierra Leone. Her mother, Moki, was a twenty-one-year-old Swedish textile artist. Her parents split up just after Neneh was born, and not long afterwards Moki met and fell in love with acclaimed jazz musician Don Cherry. Eventually, the strong pull New York City in the 1970s drew him them there, but they made a home wherever they traveled. Neneh and her brother Eagle-Eye experienced a life of creativity, freedom, and, of course, music.
In A Thousand Threads, Neneh takes readers from the charming old schoolhouse in the woods of Sweden where she grew up, to the village in Sierra Leone that was birthplace of her biological father, to the early punk scene in London and New York, to finding her identity with her stepfather’s family in Watts, California. Neneh has lived an extraordinary life of connectivity and creativity and she recounts in intimate detail how she burst onto the scene as a teenager in the punk band The Slits, and went on to release her first album in 1989 with a worldwide hit single “Buffalo Stance.”
Neneh’s inspiring and deeply compelling memoir both celebrates female empowerment and shines a light on the global music scene—and is perfect for anyone interested in the artistic life in all its forms.
The shortlist will be revealed on March 26 before the winner who receives the 30,000 cash prize is announced on June 12.
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