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Lauren Fleshman’s debut book, Good for a Girl, has been awarded the 2023 William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award, becoming the first book written by a woman about women’s sports to win the prize in its 35 years.
“Women have been telling their stories for a long time, but having these storytellers encouraged, supported, and widely celebrated isn’t as common as it should be,” Fleshman wrote in an Instagram post about the award, which she says she’s still processing.
Previous awards have gone to books written by women, including Night Games, Anna Krien’s 2014 account of an Australian Rules footballer’s rape trial, and Laura Hillenbrand’s bestselling 2001 book Seabiscuit, has been awarded the.
The winning book was chosen by a panel of independent judges from the world of sports and journalism, chaired by the British author and journalist Alyson Rudd, who reviewed over 150 entries. The judges praised Fleshman’s memoir for its “heartfelt narrative” and “compelling writing.”
It was an auspicious year for women’s books about sports, with the publication of Mary Ngugi: Empowering Kenyan Girls Beyond Running by Christine Yu; Des Linden’s and Caster Semenya’s memoirs; and Kara Goucher’s exposé on the abuse and cruelty she endured while training with The Oregon Project, just to name a few. At the award ceremony held in London, Rudd said, “For the first time, women’s books dominated, showing that more women are being commissioned to tell their stories, with many bravely tackling challenges within the sporting world.”
Fleshman received £30,000 ($38,133) with the award for her book which is part-memoir, part-manifesto, and documents her personal story as an elite runner and calls for reform within women’s sports. She joins a list of previous winners that includes the likes of Lance Armstrong, celebrated sportswriter Duncan Hamilton, and Jeremy Wilson, who was last year’s winner for his book, Beryl, about the great cyclist Beryl Burton, a woman who set a world record in 1967 that beat the men for distance covered in 12 hours.
Further reflecting in her Instagram post, Fleshman wrote that when her daughter Zadie was born six years ago, she doubted her book would have been published with much support.
“Things are changing fast in women’s sport,” she wrote, “with record investment and viewership. But if we don’t continue to address the root problems, they will only expand as women’s sport grows, harming even more people. My greatest hope is that by the time Zadie reads this book, the topics have become so irrelevant that she asks herself ‘how the hell did this book win Sports Book of the Year?’ We got to work, kid.”
Abby Carney is a writer and journalist in New York. A former D1 college runner and current amateur track athlete, she's written about culture and characters in running and outdoor sports for Runner's World, Like the Wind Magazine, Geordie Beamish Had His Face Stepped On at Worlds, and other outlets. She also writes about things that have nothing to do with running, and was previously the editor of a food magazine.
