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Anie, Knapp and Lloyd Banwo make Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award longlist
The longlist for the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award, featuring titles by Sussie Anie, Cecilia Knapp and Ayanna Lloyd Banwo, has been unveiled.
The winner of the award, which is open to any début novel written in English and published in the UK, will receive £2,500 cash. The winning novel is selected by this year’s guest adjudicator Louisa Young from a shortlist drawn up by a panel of Authors’ Club members, chaired by Lucy Popescu.
Popescu said: “We are delighted to announce our longlist of 12 debut novelists tackling a fascinating diversity of subjects. These compelling novels explore art and privilege, war, loss, blackmail and theft as well as love, desire, obsession and the pursuit of power. We visit several UK locations and are transported to the American frontier, Australia, Trinidad, Eastern Europe and the siege of Sarajevo.”
The longlisted novels are:
- Sussie Anie To Fill a Yellow House (Phoenix Books)
- Freya Berry The Dictator’s Wife (Headline Review)
- James Cahill Tiepolo Blue, Sceptre (Hodder & Stoughton)
- Yasmin Cordery-Khan Edgware Road (Head of Zeus)
- Paddy Crewe My Name is Yip (Doubleday)
- Cecilia Knapp Little Boxes (The Borough Press)
- Ayanna Lloyd Banwo When We Were Birds (Hamish Hamilton)
- Priscilla Morris Black Butterflies (Duckworth)
- Sheena Patel I’m a Fan (Rough Trade Books)
- Lizzie Pook Moonlight and The Pearler’s Daughter (Mantle)
- Joanna Quinn The Whalebone Theatre (Fig Tree)
- Emma Styles No Country for Girls (Sphere)
The shortlist will be revealed on 20th March with an event to follow on 3rd May. The winner will be revealed during a dinner at the National Liberal Club on 24th May.
