Inside the Australian and New Zealand book industry

Image. Advertisement:

Schmidt longlisted for Women’s Prize for Fiction 2018

9 March 2018   Books+Publishing
@booksandpublishing

Australian author Sarah Schmidt has been longlisted for the 2018 Women’s Prize for Fiction for her debut novel, See What I Have Done (Hachette).

Schmidt’s book takes as its subject the infamous 19th-century murder case surrounding Lizzie Borden, who was accused of murdering her father and stepmother in 1892.

Joining Schmidt on the longlist are 15 other titles:

  • H(A)PPY (Nicola Barker, William Heinemann)
  • The Idiot (Elif Batuman, Penguin)
  • Three Things About Elsie (Joanna Cannon, HarperCollins)
  • Miss Burma (Charmaine Craig, Grove Press)
  • Manhattan Beach (Jennifer Egan, Corsair)
  • The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock (Imogen Hermes Gowar, Harvill Secker)
  • Sight (Jessie Greengrass, John Murray)
  • Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine (Gail Honeyman, HarperCollins)
  • When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife (Meena Kandasamy, Atlantic)
  • Elmet (Fiona Mozley, JM Originals)
  • The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (Arundhati Roy, Hamish Hamilton)
  • A Boy in Winter (Rachel Seiffert, Virago)
  • Home Fire (Kamila Shamsie, Bloomsbury)
  • The Trick to Time (Kit de Waal, Viking)
  • Sing, Unburied, Sing (Jesmyn Ward, Bloomsbury)

The longlist includes six debut authors and five second novels.

The judging panel comprised BBC Radio 4’s editor Sarah Sands, TV journalist Anita Anand, writer and comedian Katie Brand, co-founder of the Women’s Equality Party Catherine Mayer and actress Imogen Stubbs.

As previously reported by Books+Publishing, Schmidt was recently awarded the inaugural MUD Literary Prize, longlisted for an ABIA award in the literary fiction category, and nominated in the ABIA’s Matt Richell award for new writer of the year.

The Women’s Prize for Fiction was until 2016 known as the Baileys Prize for Fiction, and was previously known as the Orange Prize for Fiction (between 1996 and 2012). The prize ‘celebrates excellence, originality and accessibility in women’s writing from throughout the world’, and the winner, announced this year on 6 June, receives a £30,000 (A$53,268) cash contribution and a bronze statue, known as a ‘Bessie’.

For more information about the prize and this year’s longlisted titles, see the website.

 

Category: Awards Local news