Women’s Prize winner Ruth Ozeki: ‘There is a real push to silence novelists’

Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter for all the latest entertainment news and reviews Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Given what’s going on in America right now with the threat to Roe v Wade, I’m no longer sure that’s true.” Ozeki has another good reason to stand up for the Women’s Prize: she won it last week, with her bewitchingly uncategorisable fourth novel The Book of Form and Emptiness. There is a real push to silence us.” open image in gallery The authors shortlisted for Women’s Prize were Elif Shafak, Ozeki, Lisa Allen-Agostini, Meg Mason and Maggie Shipstead She agrees there are threats, too, from the rise of augmented reality, or what she calls “realities constructed and paid for by corporate interests” – the subject of My Year of Meats, about a documentary-maker producing Ozeki splits her time between New York and Massachusetts with her husband, and combines writing novels with her duties as a Buddhist priest. “Certainly the ability to sit quietly and simply be in the moment, aware of everything around you, to simply sit and watch stories arise, is very useful for writing.” What’s more, meditating has given her the stamina it takes to keep on at a novel, particularly such a tricksy, questing, form-breaking one as The Book of Form and Emptiness. “There’s nothing like sitting in the same position for hours on end and not moving, even though it hurts, to teach you about keeping going, even when it’s difficult,” she grins.