Indies dominate Collyer Bristow Prize 2019 shortlist

Indie presses dominate this year’s shortlist for the Collyer Bristow Prize 2019 for debut fiction.

Now in its second year, the prize celebrates “exceptional literary fiction” and invited publishers to submit one debut work published in the calendar year 2018.

The list of nominees, revealed by The London Magazine, includes Sophie Mackintosh, whose novel The Water Cure (Hamish Hamilton) was also longlisted for the Man Booker Prize last year. Samuel Fisher is nominated for The Chameleon (Salt), which was also longlisted for The Desmond Elliott Prize 2019.

Poet Katherine Kilalea gets a nod for Ok, Mr Field (Faber) along with Danny Denton’s The Earlie King & the Kid in Yellow by (Granta Books) alongside The Orchid and the Wasp by Caoilinn Hughes (Oneworld).

Chaired by Matthew Scott, co-editor of The London Magazine, the panel of judges features critic Suzi Feay, broadcaster Bidisha and editor Houman Barekat.

Scott said: “‘We would like to thank our sponsors, Collyer Bristow, for supporting this prize again and, in so doing, celebrating the extraordinary breadth of new fiction that is emerging in the UK at this moment. Our outstanding winner in the first year of the prize was David Keenan for This is Memorial Device (Faber) and we again have a remarkable shortlist this year, which promises to live up to that extremely high standard of innovatively original writing.”

The prize-giving will be held under the auspices of The London Magazine on 3rd October at the Collyer Bristow Contemporary Art Gallery in London.