Jewell took the top £5,000, Tesco-sponsored, Best Comedy Romance prize for her sixth novel, 31 Dream Street. The book tells the story of the burgeoning love between a misfit, failed poet and his neighbour, who has for years been watching him and his string of unusual tenants from her house across the street. Speaking to guardian.co.uk today, Jewell expressed her particular delight at receiving the prize for a best-selling genre little regarded by the literary establishment.

"You feel undervalued when you write the kind of fiction I write," she said. "So it's great to have this genre given its own night of appreciation and recognition. To win is just wonderful." She also expressed her surprise at winning a prize for "comedy romance", suggesting that her book, which she recognised would attract the label "chick lit", or "popular women's fiction", as she prefers to call it, was "neither particularly funny, nor particularly romantic".

Jewell, who is a judge on this year's Costa first novel award, added that the prize represented an important development in the public's perception of the genre. "The award is definitely something the genre needs, and more importantly is something the reader needs. People say 'chick lit' and what they mean is 'crap'. And so even though you might sell 100,000 copies of a book, you're never going to win a prize. "These are books that people don't just read, they devour them - they stay up into the early hours because they want to devour them."