Orange Prize Longlist

The Orange Prize is one of my favourite prizes for literature. It takes on everything I love about books, and awards a prize for it! Plus, it’s just for women. Check out this year’s longlist:

• Island of Wings by Karin Altenberg (Quercus) – Swedish; 1st Novel
• On the Floor by Aifric Campbell (Serpent’s Tail) – Irish; 3rd Novel
• The Grief of Others by Leah Hager Cohen (The Clerkenwell Press) – American; 4th Novel
• The Sealed Letter by Emma Donoghue (Picador) – Irish; 7th Novel
• Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan (Serpent’s Tail) – Canadian; 2nd Novel
• The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright (Jonathan Cape) – Irish; 5th Novel
• The Flying Man by Roopa Farooki (Headline Review) – British; 5th Novel
• Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon (Quercus) – American; 4th Novel
• Painter of Silence by Georgina Harding (Bloomsbury) – British; 3rd Novel
• Gillespie and I by Jane Harris (Faber & Faber) – British; 2nd Novel
• The Translation of the Bones by Francesca Kay (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) – British; 2nd Novel
• The Blue Book by A.L. Kennedy (Jonathan Cape) – British; 6th Novel
• The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (Harvill Secker) – American; 1st Novel
• The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (Bloomsbury) – American; 1st Novel
• Foreign Bodies by Cynthia Ozick (Atlantic Books) – American; 7th Novel
• State of Wonder by Ann Patchett (Bloomsbury) – American; 6th Novel
• There but for the by Ali Smith (Hamish Hamilton) – British; 5th Novel
• The Pink Hotel by Anna Stothard (Alma Books) – British; 2nd Novel
• Tides of War by Stella Tillyard (Chatto & Windus) – British; 1st Novel
• The Submission by Amy Waldman (William Heinemann) – American; 1st Novel

The judges – Joanna Trollope (chair, writer), Lisa Appignanesi (writer, novelist and broadcaster), Victoria Derbyshire (journalist and broadcaster), Natalie Haynes (writer and broadcaster), and Natasha Kaplinsky (broadcaster) – select from the list a winner who will receive a cheque for £30,000 and a limited edition bronze known as a ‘Bessie’, created and donated by the artist Grizel Niven.

Previous winners include The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht, The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver, Home by Marilynne Robinson and The Road Home by Rose Tremain.

Are you going to read any of the Orange nominees? Have you read any previous winners?

The shortlist will be announced on the 7th April. Who do you want to be on the list?

If you want to buy any of the above titles, get them here.