The shortlist for the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction has been announced!

The Women’s Prize for Fiction aims to reward ‘excellence, originality and accessibility in writing by women in English from throughout the world’.

It is awarded annually to a woman author of any nationality for the best original full-length novel written in English, and published in the United Kingdom in the preceding year.

The winning author receives £30,000 (about R700,000) and a limited edition bronze figurine called the ‘Bessie’. The winner and the other five shortlisted authors also receive a bespoke leather-bound edition of their novel.

During the announcement on 28 April 2021, Chair of judges and novelist Bernardine Evaristo said:

‘With this shortlist, we are excited to present a gloriously varied and thematically rich exploration of women’s fiction at its finest.’

2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlist

• The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett (Dialogue Books)
• Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (Bloomsbury Publishing)
• Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller (Fig Tree)
• Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi (Viking Books)
• How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House by Cherie Jones (Tinder Press)
• No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood (Bloomsbury Circus)

Categories Fiction International

Tags 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlist Awards Bernardine Evaristo Bloomsbury Circus Bloomsbury Publishing Brit Bennett Cherie Jones Claire Fuller Dialogue Books Fig Tree How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House News No One is Talking About This Patricia Lockwood Piranesi Susanna Clarke The Vanishing Half Tinder Press Transcendent Kingdom Unsettled Ground Viking Books Yaa Gyasi