Index on Censorship last night honoured two women at the British Book Awards in London who showed bravery in standing up to rich and powerful people. Both authors refused to be silenced despite legal threats and went on to write international bestsellers.
The first was Virginia Giuffre’s book Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice and the second Sarah Wynn-Williams’ Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed and Lost Idealism.
Co-presenting the award with Index was Yulia Navalnya, the activist, publisher and wife of the late Alexei Navalny.
The Freedom to Publish Award has been supported by Index for the last four years.
CEO Jemimah Steinfeld not only praised both women but also the tenacious publishers Transworld and Pan Macmillan. She said: “This year’s freedom to publish award will honour two different books and authors. These books are not the same story. They are not the same abuses. What happened to them is not morally comparable,” she said, adding:
“But both books experienced a series of legal hurdles before they were published. Both authors were silenced, repeatedly. Both authors continued still to speak up because they believed their stories were of public interest. And both authors were fortunate to find tenacious publishers who refused to back down.”
Yulia Navalnya said: “History knows one thing: a forbidden word does not disappear. It always returns.”
Giuffre began work on her book, a testimony of her abuse at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein, his partner Ghislaine Maxwell and others, with journalist Amy Wallace in 2020 and it was published posthumously, following her death in April 2025. Legal teams in the US and UK worked extremely hard to build a defence for publication that would stand up in court. Go ahead was only given six weeks before publication.
Giuffre’s editor and publisher at Transworld, Susanna Wadeson, said: “Virginia’s book puts their victims back at the centre of our concerns. It was essential that we find a way to publish it and give her a platform – perhaps even more so after she had died.”
The publication of Wynn-Williams’ book was equally challenging. An account of her time at Facebook, the book makes allegations about the company’s internal culture and practices. Meta dispute the claims. They secured a ruling on the eve of publication to stop her from publicising the book. She runs the risk of a US$50,000 fine if she does so, a figure that apparently represents damages Wynn-Williams has to pay for breaching the separation agreement she signed with Meta in 2017.
Joanna Prior OBE, CEO, Pan Macmillan, said: “Sarah Wynn William’s courage is extraordinary and Pan Macmillan is proud to stand with her and ensure her voice is heard. We believe the book remains the ultimate authenticated record – a vital weapon against those who use power and money to silence inconvenient stories. Careless People speaks for everyone who cares about the safety of our children and the transparency of the global platforms that shape our lives. No individual should be silenced by corporate tactics, especially when the public interest is this high.”
The Freedom to Publish award serves a double purpose – to highlight censorious practices impacting the book industry and to celebrate those who fight back. Arabella Pike, a publishing director at HarperCollins UK, was the inaugural winner of the prize in 2022 for her work defending Catherine Belton’s book Putin’s People and Tom Burgis’s Kleptopia from SLAPP libel actions. Since then, it has been awarded to Salman Rushdie following his brutal attack, Margaret Atwood whose books are constantly the subject of book challenges in the USA, and Boris Akunin, Russia’s bestseller writer who was labelled a “terrorist” by Vladimir Putin, which led to his books being pulled from distribution across Russia.
Philip Jones, editor of The Bookseller and chair of The British Book Awards, said of last night’s winners: “The Freedom to Publish Award acts as our response to those who would silence the truth, and this year recognises the bravest of people, Virginia Roberts Giuffre and Sarah Wynn-Williams.
