Philanthropist Melinda Gates has donated $250,000 U-S to a new prize celebrating women’s contributions to American and Canadian literature.

The former general manager at Microsoft and wife of Bill Gates joins a list of high-profile supporters of the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction to address inequality women face in the publishing world, including celebrated authors like Canadian literary legend Margaret Atwood.

Carol Ann Shields was an American-born Canadian novelist and short story writer best known for her 1993 novel The Stone Diaries, which won the U.S. Pulitzer Prize for Fiction as well as the Governor General’s Award in Canada.

The annual award will be handed out each spring starting in 2023 after it was postponed because of the pandemic.

Eligible women and non-binary writers must be residents or citizens of the U.S. or Canada, and the books must be published in English in those two countries.