The international longlist for one of the world’s largest literary prizes for young writers – the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize – is announced today, Thursday 26 January. With authors hailing from the UK, Ireland, Nigeria, Kenya, Somalia, Lebanon and Australia, this year’s longlist of 12 features an even split of debut and established names, with African diaspora and female voices dominating the longlist.

Worth £20,000, the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize is one of the UK’s most prestigious literary prizes. Won last year by Patricia Lockwood for No One is Talking About This, the longlist for the prize for the best published literary work in English written by an author aged 39 or under features themes of coming of age, adversity and love, it comprises eight novels, two poetry collections and two short story collections.

The Longlist is featured below. Scroll to buy any of these titles, and know you are making a difference to schools across the UK.

Limberlost by Robbie Arnott

Briefly, A Delicious Life by Nell Stevens

Seven Steeples by Sara Baume

God’s Children Are Little Broken Things by Arinze Ifeakadu

Maps Of Our Spectacular Bodies by Maddie Mortimer

Things They Lost by Okwiri Oduor 

Losing the Plot by Derek Owusu

I’m a Fan by Sheena Patel

Send Nudes by Saba Sams

Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head by Warsan Shire

No Land to Light On by Yara Zgheib

Phantom Gang by Ciarán O’Rourke

The titles will be whittled down to a shortlist of six by a panel of judges chaired by  British producer and books editor for BBC Radio Di Speirs. She will sit alongside prize-winning Welsh author and lecturer in English at Swansea University, Jon Gower, bestselling American author and 2012 winner of the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize Maggie Shipstead, British poet and the founder of Octavia Poetry Collective for Women of Colour Rachel Long, and Nepali-Indian author and 2013 Prize shortlistee Prajwal Parajuly.

The shortlist will be announced on 23rd March followed by the winner’s ceremony in Swansea on 11th May, prior to International Dylan Thomas Day on 14th May.

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