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Oyeyemi, Lockwood and Azumah Nelson longlisted for £20k Dylan Thomas Prize
Helen Oyeyemi, Caleb Azumah Nelson and Patricia Lockwood are among the authors shortlisted for the £20,000 Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize.
One of the UK’s most prestigious literary prizes, the award recognises the best published literary work in the English language written by an author aged 39 or under, taking in international fiction in all its forms, including poetry, novels, short stories and drama.
In a year that particularly celebrates the achievement of young international female writers, half the longlisted books are published by independent presses, with Faber taking two titles. This year’s longlist comprises eight novels, two poetry collections and two short story collections, and is dominated by themes of identity, conflict and love.
The longlist includes the "gritty" debut novel by interdisciplinary London artist Tice Cin, titled Keeping the House (And Other Stories); American novelist and Women’s Prize for Fiction finalist Lockwood’s meditation on love, language and human connection, No One is Talking About This (Bloomsbury Circus); and Dantiel W Moniz’s debut collection of short intergenerational stories Milk Blood Heat (Atlantic Books).
Also featured is British writer Fiona Mozley’s urban comedy Hot Stew (John Murray Press); the "honest and darkly funny" debut novel Acts of Desperation by Irish writer Megan Nolan (Jonathan Cape); and British-born, Prague-based Oyeyemi’s exploration of what it means to be seen by another person in Peaces (Faber).
Poet Desiree Bailey is longlisted for What Noise Against the Cane (Yale University Press), a collection that draws on her cultural identity and upbringing in Trinidad and Tobago. She is joined by fellow poet Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe with debut collection Auguries of a Minor God, which follows two different journeys, the first of love and the wounds it makes and the second following a family of refugees who have fled to the West from conflict in an unspecified Middle Eastern country.
Also longlisted is debut novelist Nathan Harris for The Sweetness of Water (Tinder Press) and Azumah Nelson’s Open Water (Viking), which won the Costa First Novel Award in 2021 and was named as Bad Form’s Book of the Year.
Completing the list is Sri Lankan writer Anuk Arudpragasam for A Passage North (Granta), which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize last year, and Brandon Taylor’s Filthy Animals (Daunt Books Publishing), bringing together "quietly devastating stories" of young people caught up in violence and desire, while longing for intimacy.
Chaired by Jaipur Literature Festival’s founder-director and award-winning author Namita Gokhale, the longlisted titles will now be whittled down to a six-strong shortlist by a panel of judges, including former prize winner Maggie Shipstead, poet and novelist Luke Kennard, novelist and Swansea University lecturer Alan Bilton, and Nigerian British author Irenosen Okojie.
The shortlist will be announced on 31st March, with the winner’s ceremony to be held in Swansea on 12th May, two days before International Dylan Thomas Day.
The 2021 prize was won by Raven Leilani for her debut novel Luster (Picador).
