McAuley, Swift and Banwo shortlisted for The Kitschies

Paul McAuley, E J Swift and Ayanna Lloyd Banwo have been shortlisted for The Kitschies, the £2,000 awards for "the year’s most progressive, intelligent and entertaining fiction that contains elements of the speculative and fantastic".

The prize is eligible to all books first published or self-published in the UK during 2022. Now entering its 15th year, it is sponsored by Blackwell’s, with additional funding coming from NESTA and further partnership support from the Bradford Literature Festival. 

This year’s shortlisted titles were chosen from 215 submissions from over 50 different publishers. The shortlists take a broad perspective on speculative fiction, with finalists ranging from epic fantasy to magical realism, and from cosmic space opera to satirical graphic novels.

The topics addressed include a prominent focus on climate change, the unchecked acceleration of technology and AI, as well identity, gender and imperialism.

In The Red Tentacle category for novels, McAuley was shortlisted for Beyond the Burn Line (Gollancz), Swift for The Coral Bones (Unsung Stories), and W P Wiles for The Last Blade Priest (Angry Robot). Mariana Enriquez was also on the list with Our Share of Night, translated by Megan McDowell (Granta), while Emily McGovern was shortlisted for Twelve Percent Dread (Picador).

Meanwhile, in The Golden Tentacle category which awards debuts, Banwo is on the list with When We Were Birds (Hamish Hamilton), alongside Zain Khalid with Brother Alive (Atlantic) and Vauhini Vara with The Immortal King Rao (Atlantic). The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Naylor (W&N) is also on the shortlist, as well as Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield (Picador).

The Red and Golden Tentacles were judged by Adam Roberts, Molly Tanzer, Mahvesh Murad and Jared Shurin, while cover art is represented in a third category, called The Inky Tentacle. 

The Inky Tentacle section features The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka (Sort of Books), the cover for which for done by Peter Dyer. Celestial by M D Lachlan (Gollancz) is also on the shortlist for its cover, done by Nick Shah, Tomas Almeida, Joanna Ridley and Helen Ewing. The other titles in this section include Poster Girl by Veronica Roth (Hodderscape) for its cover by Lydia Blagden, Paper Crusade by Michelle Penn, for its cover by Klara Smith (Arachne Press), and Motherthing by Ainslie Hogarth (Atlantic), for which Mark Abrams did the cover. 

Notably, this year also includes the prize’s first-ever graphic novel finalist, McGovern’s Twelve Percent Dread, as well as its third work in translation, Enriquez’s Our Share of Night.
The awards ceremony will be held at a free, public event on Saturday 24th June at the Bradford Literature Festival, with winners announced by the judges and several guests. 

Leila Abu El Hawa, director of The Kitschies, said: “The Kitschies has a long tradition not only of an eclectic shortlist, but of diverse ones. We’re pleased by the wide variety of authors and publishers who trust us with their books, and the ever-increasing range of speculative and fantastic literature. [This year] was a particularly exciting year, with fantasy, horror, and science fiction reflecting the real anxieties and concerns of the world.” 

Tanzer added: “Judging for the Kitschies this year has been a whirlwind tour of human imagination. I’ve gone 30,000 years into the future and down to the deepest parts of the sea; I’ve been shown thoughtful perspectives of our own world and spectacular visions of worlds beyond. I’ve come away from the experience inspired, and confident that much of the best writing out there today is speculative."