3 Men posing as a woman writer win a million-euro literary prize

It came as a shock when three men approached the stage to get the award for Carmen Mola, who was awarded Spain's most popular crime writer, and a million euros for winning the 2021 Premio Planeta literary prize. It was discovered at that moment that these three men were writing under a pseudonym. 

The three men were - Jorge Diaz, Agustin Martinez, and Antonio Mercer, who have previously worked as scriptwriters for several television shows and are skillful writers in their own right.
 
The trio commented, "We didn't hide behind a woman, we hid behind a name. I don't know if a female pseudonym would sell more than a male one, I don't have the faintest idea, but I doubt it."

Carmen Mola was presented as a mother of three and a professor who books in her free time. According to Spanish paper El Mundo, "It hasn't escaped anyone's notice that the idea of a university professor and mother of three, who taught algebra classes in the morning then wrote ultra-violent, macabre novels in scraps of free time in the afternoon, made for a great marketing operation."

The trio has been hiding behind the female name and has been giving interviews for years before they were discovered in an award function.