Three US women contest Orange fiction prize

Three U.S. authors were nominated on Tuesday, April 20 for the Orange Prize for Fiction which honours women writers. Barbara Kingsolver (The Lacuna), Attica Locke (Black Water Rising) and Lorrie Moore (A Gate at the Stairs) are on the shortlist for the annual award, now in its 15th year.

They are up against Britons Rosie Alison (The Very Thought of You) and Booker Prize winner Hilary Mantel, whose historical novel about the court of Henry VIII, Wolf Hall, is up for another prestigious award.
Completing the six-strong list is Monique Roffey, of British and Trinidadian descent, with The White Woman on the Green Bicycle.

This shortlist achieves the near impossible of combining literary merit with sheer readability, said Daisy Goodwin, chair of the judging panel. With a thriller, historical novels that reflect our world back to us, as well as a tragicomedy about post 9/11 America, there is something here to challenge, amuse and enthral every kind of reader. Two of the six nominees are first-time novelists - Alison and Locke.

The prize was set up in 1996 to celebrate and promote fiction by women and is awarded for the best novel of the year written by a woman. The winner, who will be announced on June 9, will receive a cheque for 30,000 pounds ($46,000).

Full report here Reuters

Hilary Mantel on Orange Prize longlist

Booker Prize winner Hilary Mantel has been longlisted for this year's Orange Prize for Fiction. Mantel has been nominated for her historical novel Wolf Hall, based on Henry VIII's adviser Thomas Cromwell.

She is joined on the 20-strong list by fellow Booker nominee Sarah Waters, previous Orange Prize winner Andrea Levy, and seven first-time novelists.

Now in its 15th year, the Orange Prize celebrates excellence, originality and accessibility in women's writing.

'Tough process'
A shortlist will be revealed on 20 April, with the winner announced at a ceremony on 9 June, where the prize of £30,000 will be presented. Author and TV producer Daisy Goodwin, chairwoman of the judges, said it was a "muscular and pleasurable" longlist.

"It was a tough judging process as there was a particularly strong range of books submitted from all over the world," she said.

Full report here BBC
More about the Orange Prize here

The longlist in full:
• Rosie Alison - The Very Thought of You
• Eleanor Catton - The Rehearsal
• Clare Clark - Savage Lands
• Amanda Craig - Hearts and Minds
• Roopa Farooki -The Way Things Look to Me
• Rebecca Gowers - The Twisted Heart
• MJ Hyland - This is How
• Sadie Jones - Small Wars
• Barbara Kingsolver - The Lacuna
• Laila Lalami - Secret Son
• Andrea Levy - The Long Song
• Attica Locke - Black Water Rising
• Hilary Mantel - Wolf Hall
• Maria McCann - The Wilding
• Nadifa Mohamed - Black Mamba Boy
• Lorrie Moore - A Gate at the Stairs
• Monique Roffey - The White Woman on the Green Bicycle
• Amy Sackville - The Still Point
• Kathryn Stockett - The Help
• Sarah Waters - The Little Stranger

Seamus Heaney wins literature prize

Nobel prize winning poet Seamus Heaney took home one of the most important UK literary awards, the David Cohen Prize in London on March 18.

The David Cohen Prize for Literature, worth £40,000, is awarded every two years for a lifetime’s achievement.

The last winner was also Irish, poet Derek Mahon. Previous winners of the award include fellow Nobel laureates VS Naipaul, Harold Pinter and Doris Lessing as well as Muriel Spark and Beryl Bainbridge.

Heaney said: “Much about the David Cohen Prize makes it highly honorific: first of all there’s the list of the previous winners, a roll call of the best; there’s the fact that you don’t enter for it but are chosen from the wide field of your contemporaries; and then there’s the verification of that reference to ‘lifetime achievement’.”

Samarasan, Shamsie longlisted for Orange Prize

Three Asian novelists works have been nominated to longlist of the Orange Prize for Fiction 2009.

These are:
Preeta Samarasan for Evening is the Whole Day
Kamila Shamsie for Burnt Shadows
V V Ganeshananthan for Love Marriage

The longlist has 20 titles. The Orange Prize for Fiction shortlist shortlist will be announced on 21 April 2009 and the winner will be announced at an awards ceremony on 3 June.

The Orange Prize for Fiction, is the UK’s only annual book award for fiction written by a woman. The panel of judges for 2009 awards was announced on 17 March 2009. The Orange Prize for Fiction 2009 judges will be chaired by broadcaster Fi Glover, who will be joined by writer, novelist and broadcaster Bidisha, journalist and academic Sarah Churchwell, journalist and novelist Kira Cochrane and entrepreneur Martha Lane Fox.

The other writers in the long list are Toni Morrison (A Mercy) Debra Adelaide (The Household Guide to Dying), Gaynor Arnold (Girl in a Blue Dress), Lissa Evans (Their Finest Hour and a Half), Bernardine Evaristo (Blonde Roots), Ellen Feldman (Scottsboro), Laura Fish (Strange Music), Allegra Goodman (Intuition), Samantha Harvey (The Wilderness), Samantha Hunt (The Invention of Everything Else), Michelle de Kretser (The Lost Dog), Deirdre Madden (Molly Fox's Birthday), Gina Ochsner (The Russian Dreambook of Colour and Flight), Marilynne Robinson (Home), Curtis Sittenfeld (American Wife), Miriam Toews (The Flying Troutmans) and Ann Weisgarber (The Personal History of Rachel DuPree).