Women's Prize for Fiction Shortlist Announced

The Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, formerly the Orange Prize, has announced the shortlist for its 2014 award. Now in its nineteenth year, the £30,000 (approximately $50,000) London-based prize is given to a woman writer from any country for a novel written in English and published in the previous year.

The finalists are Nigerian American author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for Americanah (Knopf), Australian author Hannah Kent for Burial Rites (Picador), British American author Jhumpa Lahiri for The Lowland (Bloomsbury), Irish author Audrey Magee for The Undertaking (Atlantic Books), Irish author Eimear McBride for A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing (Faber & Faber), and American author Donna Tartt for The Goldfinch (Little, Brown).

This year’s shortlisted books were selected from a longlist of twenty. The shortlist boasts one previous Orange Prize winner, one previously shortlisted author, and three debut novelists.

The judges for the 2014 prize are Helen Fraser, the chief executive of the Girls’ Day School Trust; Mary Beard, a professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge; writer Denise Mina; Times columnist, author, and screenwriter Caitlin Moran; and Sophie Raworth, a BBC broadcaster and journalist.

“We are very excited by the books we have chosen for the shortlist,” said Helen Fraser, the chair of judges, in yesterday's announcement. “Each one is original and extraordinary in its own way—each offers something different and exciting and illuminating.” The winner will be announced at a ceremony in London on June 4.

Established in 1996 to celebrate and promote fiction by women throughout the world, the Women’s Prize for Fiction was renamed and took on new sponsorship last year after a longtime partnership with telecommunications company Orange. The prize is anonymously endowed, and is the UK’s only annual book award for fiction written by women. Any woman writing in English, regardless of nationality, country of residence, age, or subject matter, is eligible.

American author A. M. Homes won the 2013 Prize for her novel May We Be Forgiven. In the video below from the Guardian, British author Jeanette Winterson interviews Homes about her winning book.