By Dennis Abrams
The longlist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction (the former Orange Prize for Fiction), awarded to “celebrate excellence, originality and accessibility in women’s writing from throughout the world,” has been announced.
The list features literary big names such as Hilary Mantel (receiving her third major literary award nomination — with two wins so far — for Bringing Up the Bodies), Zadie Smith, Barbara Kingsolver and AM Homes, along with much talked about popular successes as Gillian Flynn, G. Willow Wilson, Maria Semple, and Sheila Heti.
It was only last year that the award lost its major sponsor, Orange. And while the Prize board was inundated with offers for donations and sponsorship, it ultimately was decided that the award for 2013 would be privately (and anonymously) endowed.
The winner will receive 30,000 pounds (around $45,000), as well as a bronze award created by the artist Grizel Niven known as a “Bessie.”
The complete longlist for this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction:
- A Trick I Learned From Dead Men, Kitty Aldridge, Jonathan Cape
- Alif the Unseen, G. Willow Wilson, Corvus Books
- Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel, Fourth Estate
- Flight Behavior, Barbara Kingsolver, Faber & Faber
- Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn, Weidenfeld & Nicolson
- Honour, Elif Shafak, Viking
- How Should a Person Be?, Sheila Heti, Harvill Secker
- Ignorance, Michele Roberts, Bloomsbury Publishing
- Lamb, Bonnie Nadzam, Hutchinson
- Life After Life, Kate Atkinson, Doubleday
- Mateship With Birds, Carrie Tiffany, Picador
- May We Be Forgiven, A.M. Homes, Granta Books
- NW, Zadie Smith, Hamish Hamilton
- The Forrests, Emily Perkins, Bloomsbury Circus
- The Innocents, Francesca Segal, Chatto and Windus
- The Light Between Oceans, M.L. Stedman, Doubleday
- The Marlowe Papers, Ros Barber, Sceptre
- The People of Forever Are Not Afraid, Shani Boianjiu, Hogarth
- The Red Book, Deborah Copaken Kogan, Virago
- Where’d You Go, Bernadette?, Maria Semple, Weidenfeld and Nicolson