READY Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction Longlist Announced

If you enjoyed Tuesday’s post featuring the finalists for the PEN/Faulkner award, I’m hoping that you’ll also be interested in today’s post highlighting the longlisted titles for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction.

Your first reaction may well be the WHAT Women’s Prize for Fiction!?! It’s an understandable confusion as this is the first year that the long-standing award has appeared with this name. Previously sponsored by the UK telecommunications company Orange, I’m betting you’re well familiar with the Orange Prize for Fiction, the name it held until 2012. Last year’s prize went under the simple moniker of The Women’s Prize for Fiction and this year the sponsorship has changed to the liqueur producer Bailey’s (wonder what they’ll be drinking at the prize celebration?).

What’s in an a name and all that — the prize still celebrates the best novel in English written by a woman in the previous year. Authors may be of any nationality, but the books must have been published in the United Kingdom. The longlist (and this year is no exception) is generally a mix of well established and up-and-coming female authors: it was announced last week, it will be narrowed to a shortlist on April 7th and the winner will be named on June 4th.

*A note on the longlist: because this is a UK award, several of the titles have not yet been released for the North American marketplace, nor have they been given a release date yet. We’ve linked to the titles that are on order or in the library already and indicated titles which we cannot currently order.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – Americanah
Margaret Atwood – MaddAddam
Suzanne Berne – The Dogs of Littlefield*
Fatima Bhutto – The Shadow of the Crescent Moon*
Claire Cameron – The Bear
Lea Carpenter – Eleven Days
M.J. Carter – The Strangler Vine*
Eleanor Catton – The Luminaries
Deborah Kay Davies – Reasons She Goes to the Woods*
Elizabeth Gilbert – The Signature of All Things
Hannah Kent – Burial Rites
Rachel Kushner – The Flamethrowers
Jhumpa Lahiri – The Lowland
Audrey Magee – The Undertaking
Eimear McBride – A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing
Charlotte Mendelson – Almost English
Anna Quindlen – Still Life with Bread Crumbs
Elizabeth Strout – The Burgess Boys
Donna Tartt – The Goldfinch
Evie Wyld – All The Birds, Singing

*no North American Release announced