American novelist Virginia Evans won the Women’s Prize for Fiction on Thursday with The Correspondent, a word-of-mouth bestseller told in letters from the protagonist.

Canadian journalist Lyse Doucet won the Women’s Prize for Nonfiction with The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A People’s History of Afghanistan.

Both prizes come with a 30,000-pound ($40,000) purse and are open to female English-language writers from any country.