Writers’ Prize 2024 shortlist announced

The shortlist for the 2024 Writers’ Prize, formerly the Rathbones Folio Prize, has been announced.

The shortlisted books in each category are:

Fiction

• The Wren, The Wren (Anne Enright, Vintage)
• The Bee Sting (Paul Murray, Penguin)
• The Fraud (Zadie Smith, Hamish Hamilton)

Nonfiction

• Thunderclap: A memoir of life and art and sudden death (Laura Cumming, Chatto & Windus)
• Doppelganger: A trip into the mirror world (Naomi Klein, Allen Lane)
• A Thread of Violence: A story of truth, invention and murder (Mark O’Connell, Granta)

Poetry

• Self-Portrait as Othello (Jason Allen-Paisant, Carcanet Press)
• The Home Child (Liz Berry, Vintage)
• Bright Fear (Mary Jean Chan, Faber).

Winners in each category will receive a £2000 (A$3800) prize, and the winner of the Writers’ Prize Book of the Year will receive an additional £30,000 (A$57,000). The winners will be announced at the London Book Fair on 13 March.

Open to all works of literature written in English and published in the UK, The Writers’ Prize is the only international, English-language award nominated and judged purely by other writers. This year, the winners will be chosen by the Folio Academy, made up of over 350 writers, rather than by individual judges.

The overall winner of last year’s prize was Margo Jefferson for Constructing a Nervous System (Granta), with Australian author Michelle de Kretser winning the fiction category for her novel Scary Monsters (A&U).

Category: International news