Rooney and Burns make Rathbones Folio Prize longlist

Sally Rooney and Anna Burns have made the longlist for this year's Rathbones Folio Prize with 20 writers competing for the £30,000 prize. 

Can You Tolerate This by Ashleigh Young (Bloomsbury), Ghost Trees by Bob Gilbert (Saraband), I Am Dynamite! - Friedrich Nietzsche by Sue Prideaux (Faber), The Crossway by Guy Stagg (Picador) and The Library of Ice by Nancy Campbell (Simon & Schuster) are the non-fiction titles on the longlist. 

Novels dominate the 2019 longlist with 10 entries including House of Stone Novuyo by Rosa Tshuma (Atlantic), Land of The Living by Georgina Harding (Bloomsbury), Little by Edward Carey (Gallic Books), Mary Ann Sate by Alice Jolly (Unbound) and Milkman by Anna Burns (Faber).

Murmur by Will Eaves (CB editions), Normal People by Sally Rooney (Faber), Ordinary People by Diana Evans (Chatto), Red Birds by Mohammed Hanif (Bloomsbury) and There, There by Tommy Orange (Harvill) round off the novels. 

Short story collection Mothers by Chris Power (Faber), novella West by Carys Davies (Granta) and poetry The Perseverance by Raymond Antrobus (Penned in), Us by Zaffar Kunial (Faber) and Francis: A Life In Songs by Ann Wroe (Chatto) also made the longlist,www.thebookseller.com/news/rathbones-folio-prize-judges-announced-2019-917431"> judged by poet Kate Clanchy and novelists Chloe Aridjis and Owen Sheers. 

Andrew Kidd, co-founder of the Rathbones Folio Prize, said: "Arriving at a longlist from the 80 outstanding books nominated by the Folio Academy was never going to be easy. But Kate, Chloe and Owen have applied themselves with a mixture of serious intent and good humour to give us a selection of titles that is thrilling in its richness, diversity and range. There is, truly, something here for everyone."

Open to English-language writers from around the world, the Rathbones Folio Prize, which rewards the best work of literature published in the UK, is the only literary prize in which all the books -fiction, non-fiction, short stories or poetry - are considered. The judges will next decide on a shortlist of eight, to be announced on 4th April, and the eventual winner will receive a cheque for £30,000 at the award ceremony on 20th May. 

The Rathbones Folio Prize increased its prize money for 2019 from £20,000 to £30,000 after receiving renewed sponsorship from Rathbone Investment Management.