More than half of this year’s longlist for the Women’s prize for fiction are debuts, with nine first novels, including Trespasses by Louise Kennedy and I’m a Fan by Sheena Patel, up for the £30,000 award. The debut novelists are up against previous Women’s prize-winning authors Maggie O’Farrell, who won in 2020 for Hamnet, and Barbara Kingsolver, who won in 2010 for The Lacuna, and who have been chosen this year for their novels The Marriage Portrait and Demon Copperhead respectively.
Past Women’s prize shortlistees Natalie Haynes, Laline Paull and Elizabeth McKenzie have all also made this year’s longlist, while twice-Booker shortlisted NoViolet Bulawayo and Booker longlisted Sophie Mackintosh have been nominated for the first time.
Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo (Chatto)
Homesick by Jennifer Croft (Charco)
Fire Rush by Jacqueline Crooks (Cape)
Children of Paradise by Camilla Grudova (Atlantic)
Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes (Mantle)
Trespasses by Louise Kennedy (Bloomsbury)
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (Faber)
Cursed Bread by Sophie Mackintosh (Hamish Hamilton)
The Dog of the North by Elizabeth McKenzie (Fourth Estate)
Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris (Duckworth)
The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell (Tinder)
I'm a Fan by Sheena Patel (Granta, originally published by Rough Trade)
Pod by Laline Paull (Corsair)
Wandering Souls by Cecile Pin (Fourth Estate)
The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff (Allen & Unwin)
Memphis by Tara M Stringfellow (John Murray)
The longlist of 16 titles was described as “a glorious celebration of the boundless imagination and creative ambition” by the chair of judges, the broadcaster and writer Louise Minchin.
She said she and her fellow judges, novelists Rachel Joyce and Irenosen Okojie, journalist and novelist Bella Mackie and MP Tulip Siddiq, had a “really warm and engaging discussion” during their judging meeting.
“I think we’ve got a wonderful, extraordinary, eclectic mix of genres, of voices, of places”, she added – the longlist is made up of seven British authors, five Americans, one Irish, one Canadian, one Zimbabwean/American, and one French author. The novels, meanwhile, range from an ocean-set tale told from the perspective of a spinner dolphin (Pod by Laline Paull) to the coming-of-age story of a young Black woman as she navigates the dance halls and criminal gangs of 1970s Britain (Fire Rush by Jacqueline Crooks). “I think the scale and ambition of women’s writing right now is inspiring”, Minchin said.
All of the books on the list are “excellent and outstanding in their own kind of individual way”, Minchin believes. “I think a lot of them have given us a fresh perspective on different things: on history and humanity. They deal with some very difficult subjects, and hard truths, some of them with a brilliantly dark sense of humour.”
Any novel by a woman published originally in English is eligible for the award, and like last year, a quarter of the books on the 2023 list are published by independent presses. Three publishing houses, Charco Press, Duckworth Books and Rough Trade Books, have a book on the longlist for the first time.
The shortlist of six books will be revealed on 26 April and the winner on 14 June. Last year’s winner was Ruth Ozeki for her fourth novel The Book of Form and Emptiness.
Founded in 1996, after the Booker prize failed to shortlist any women five years earlier, the Women’s prize aims “to celebrate and promote fiction by women to the widest range of readers possible”. Earlier this year the prize announced a sister prize for women’s non-fiction, which plans to award its first winner in 2024.
To explore all the books on the longlist for the Women’s prize for fiction 2023 visit guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
