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Smith, Murray and Klein shortlisted for £30k Writers' Prize following major relaunch
Zadie Smith, Naomi Klein and Paul Murray are among those shortlisted for the revamped Rathbones Folio Prize, now known as the Writers’ Prize with Penguin Random House (PRH) UK securing two-thirds of the shortlist.
After announcing its relaunch last year, this year is the first time the award is decided entirely by members of the Folio Academy rather than individual judges.
Open to all forms of literature, The Writers’ Prize is the only international, English-language award nominated and judged purely by other writers. The three shortlists – fiction, non-fiction and poetry – each consist of three titles each.
Penguin Random House (PRH) UK has secured six of the nine shortlistings with Chatto & Windus and Hamish Hamilton each having two books in the running. Under the latter imprint, Smith has been nominated for the second time, this year for The Fraud, while recent Booker-shortlisted author Paul Murray is up for The Bee Sting (he is also one of the three Dublin-based authors nominated). Across Chatto & Windus, writer Laura Cumming has been shortlisted for the third time in the non-fiction category, this year for Thunderclap: A Memoir of Life and Art and Sudden Death, while Liz Berry is recognised in the poetry category for The Home Child.
Also in the non-fiction category, Klein has been nominated for Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World (Penguin Press) with Costa Book Award-winning Mary Jean Chan shortlisted for their collection Bright Fear (Faber) in the poetry category (full shortlist below).
The Folio Academy of over 350 writers will judge the award, accessing all nine titles through a partnership with NetGalley, to judge the three category winners and the overall Writers’ Prize Book of the Year. The winners will be announced at the London Book Fair on 13th March 2024.
Category winners in fiction, non-fiction and poetry will receive a £2,000 prize, and the winner of the Writers’ Prize Book of the Year will receive an additional £30,000.
Minna Fry, director of the Writers’ Prize, said: “I’m delighted with this year’s shortlists, which seem to reflect the very best of 2023’s literature and include several titles that I’ve personally been surprised not to see on other prizes’ lists.
“We are grateful to the Academy, which has taken seriously its responsibility for highlighting and singling out these wonderful books, and we hugely look forward to seeing the eventual winners emerge. The prize could not be happening without the financial support of business corporations, literary and charitable institutions, and members of the Folio Academy.”
She added: "I hope that this year’s prize will justify their faith in us and help to secure funding for a strong future.”
The award officially relaunched as The Writers’ Prize in its 10th year last November after a seven-year partnership with Rathbones Investment Management finished. The prize maintained the same prize pot as before of £36,000, through private donations “thanks to the generosity of a number of private individuals, book industry-related businesses and trusts and members of the Folio Academy”, organisers said.
Last year, Margo Jefferson took the overall prize for Constructing a Nervous System (Granta), alongside Victoria Adukwei Bulley, who was awarded the Poetry Prize for her debut collection Quiet (Faber) and Michelle de Kretser who won the fiction category for Scary Monsters (Atlantic).
The full shortlist is as follows:
Fiction
- Anne Enright – The Wren, The Wren (Jonathan Cape)
- Paul Murray – The Bee Sting (Hamish Hamilton)
- Zadie Smith – The Fraud (Hamish Hamilton)
Non-fiction
- Laura Cumming – Thunderclap: A Memoir of Life and Art and Sudden Death (Chatto & Windus)
- Naomi Klein – Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World (Penguin Press)
- Mark O’Connell – A Thread of Violence: A Story of Truth, Invention and Murder (Granta)
Poetry
- Jason Allen-Paisant – Self-Portrait as Othello (Carcanet Press)
- Liz Berry – The Home Child (Chatto & Windus)
- Mary Jean Chan – Bright Fear (Faber)
