Women's Prize for Fiction longlist announced

The Women’s Prize for Fiction — formerly the Orange Prize before the telephone corporation withdrew its funding — has announced its 20 contenders out of 140 submissions. The wide-ranging longlist of female authors includes literary heavyweights like Zadie Smith and Barbara Kingsolver as well as newcomers Shani Boianjiu and Francesca Segal. It includes Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel, which EW named the best novel of 2012, as well as Sheila Heti’s How Should a Person Be?, which EW named one of the worst. See the full list below:

Kitty Aldridge, A Trick I Learned From Dead Men

Kate Atkinson, Life After Life

Ros Barber, The Marlowe Papers

Shani Boianjiu, The People of Forever are Not Afraid

Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

Sheila Heti, How Should A Person Be?

AM Homes, May We Be Forgiven

Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior

Deborah Copaken Kogan, The Red Book

Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies

Bonnie Nadzam, Lamb

Emily Perkins, The Forrests

Michèle Roberts, Ignorance

Francesca Segal, The Innocents

Maria Semple, Where’d You Go, Bernadette

Elif Shafak, Honor

Zadie Smith, NW

ML Stedman, The Light Between Oceans

Carrie Tiffany, Mateship with Birds

G Willow Wilson, Alif the Unseen

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