Susan Choi and Katie Kitamura among authors longlisted for Women’s prize for fiction
Sixteen novels are in contention for the £30,000 award, now in its 31st year, with settings ranging from climate-ravaged islands to a near-future Kolkata
Wed 4 Mar 2026
Katie Kitamura, Susan Choi, Kit de Waal and Lily King are among the authors longlisted for this year’s Women’s prize for fiction.
Awarded annually and now in its 31st year, the prize comes with £30,000, and is one of the most prominent accolades for women’s writing in the English language. The 16-strong list features a selection of novels that range in setting from climate-ravaged islands to a near-future Kolkata, and from 1970s Birmingham to East Berlin on the brink of reunification.
Choi was longlisted for her Booker-shortlisted novel Flashlight, a sweeping historical family saga propelled by a father’s disappearance, its trauma rippling across generations and geographies. Ranging from North Korea to Indiana, the US writer’s sixth novel is “geopolitically bold” and full of “confident chaos”, writes Beejay Silcox in her Guardian review.
US writer Kitamura’s fifth novel Audition, also shortlisted for the 2025 Booker prize, follows an unnamed actor who is confronted by a younger man who claims to be her son, and probes the role that acting and performance play in our lives.
De Waal’s The Best of Everything marks a second nomination for the author, who returns with the story of a working-class Caribbean woman in 1970s Birmingham, an “understated” and “beautifully rendered” tale, writes Colin Grant in his Guardian review.
King was longlisted for her sixth novel Heart the Lover, following a university campus love story into mid-life, which was praised by Rebecca Waitas “vivid, moving and witty”.
Virginia Evans was selected for The Correspondent, which tells the story of a woman in her 70s through her letters to friends, children, loved ones and strangers.
Chaired this year by the former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard, the judging panel has chosen a longlist she describes as “international in scope and setting”. The list features nine titles from independent publishers and seven debuts.
Many of the novels on the longlist grapple with the aftershocks of political upheaval. In Paradiso 17, Hannah Lillith Assadi follows a man living in exile, moving from Palestine to Kuwait then Italy and New York. The Others by Sheena Kalayil returns to the final days of the Berlin Wall, tracing how seismic historical change filters into the private lives of three friends. And in A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing, Alice Evelyn Yang draws on folklore and elements of magical realism to examine colonial brutality and trauma.
Environmental breakdown underpins other longlisted titles. Wild Dark Shore by Australian author Charlotte McConaghy takes place on an isolated island shaped by climate collapse, while Megha Majumdar’s A Guardian and a Thiefimagines a near-future Kolkata hit by flooding and famine.
Several debut novelists turn their attention to mothers and children. The Benefactors, Wendy Erskine’s novel set in contemporary Belfast, follows allegations of a sexual assault, exploring tensions of class, status and anxiety about the future. Marcia Hutchinson’s The Mercy Step spans the first 11 years of a rebellious young girl’s life in 1960s Bradford, and in Dominion, Addie E Citchens examines the pressures placed on Black mothers.
Completing the longlist are Lucy Apps’s debut Gloria Don’t Speak, about a 19-year-old woman with a learning disability, Elaine Castillo’s Moderation, which features a content moderator who falls for her boss, and Kingfisher by Rozie Kelly, about an academic who also becomes fixated on his colleague.
Gillard is joined on this year’s judging panel by the poet and novelist Mona Arshi, the author and broadcaster Salma El-Wardany, the writer and comedian Cariad Lloyd and the DJ and author Annie Macmanus.
“These 16 books masterfully demonstrate the power of fiction to examine the messy business of being human,” Gillard said. “From climate change to artificial intelligence, they navigate the issues of our time with urgency and purpose, they immerse us in environments and experiences that are sometimes like our own, but more often are radically different, and they explore identities and perspectives that are often ignored or forgotten, amid those inherently universal and recognisable.”
A shortlist of six will be announced on 22 April, with the winner revealed on 11 June at a ceremony in London, along with the winner of the Women’s prize for nonfiction.
Last year’s Women’s prize winner was Yael van der Wouden for her debut novel The Safekeep, exploring repressed desire and historical amnesia in post-second world war Dutch society. Previous winners of the prize also include Barbara Kingsolver, Maggie O’Farrell, Kamila Shamsie and Zadie Smith.
To browse all books in the Women’s prize for fiction 2026 longlist, visit guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
