Susan Choi and Katie Kitamura are among the authors longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction | Women’s Prize for Fiction

Katie Kitamura, Susan Choi, Kate 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 is worth £30,000 and is one of the most prominent prizes for women’s writing in the English language. The list of 16 features a selection of novels whose settings range from climate-ravaged islands to near-future Kolkata, from Birmingham in the 1970s to East Berlin on the brink of reunification.

Choi was longlisted for her Booker Prize-shortlisted novel Flashlight, a wide-ranging historical family saga driven by the disappearance of a father, whose trauma spans generations and geographies. Ranging from North Korea to Indiana, the American author’s sixth novel is “geopolitically bold” and full of “confident chaos,” as Bejay Silcox wrote in her review for The Guardian.

American writer Kitamura’s third novel, The Audition, which was also shortlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize, follows an unnamed actress who encounters a younger man who claims to be her son, and explores 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, a story that is “simple” and “beautifully presented,” Colin Grant wrote in his review for The Guardian.

King has been longlisted for her sixth novel, A Lover’s Heart, following a middle-aged campus romance, which Rebecca White praised as “vivid, poignant and intelligent”.

Virginia Evans has been shortlisted for The Correspondent, which tells the story of a woman in her 70s through her letters to friends, children, lovers and strangers.

The judging panel, chaired this year by former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, selected a long list which it described as “international in scope and context”. The list includes nine titles from independent publishers and seven debut titles.

Many of the longlisted novels grapple with the aftershocks of political upheaval. In Paradiso 17, Hanna Lilith Assadi follows a man living in exile, moving from Palestine to Kuwait, then Italy and New York. “The Others” by Sheena Kalalil returns to the final days of the Berlin Wall, tracing how seismic historical change seeped into the private lives of three friends. In A Monster Slinking Towards Beijing, Alice Evelyn Yang draws on folklore and elements of magical realism to examine colonial brutality and trauma.

Ecological collapse supports other long titles. Australian author Charlotte McConaghy’s Wild Dark Shore is set on an isolated island shaped by climate breakdown, while Megha Majumdar’s A Guardian and a Thief imagines a near-future Kolkata hit by floods and famine.

Many new novelists turn their attention to mothers and children. The Benefactors, Wendy Erskine’s novel set in contemporary Belfast, follows allegations of sexual assault, and explores tensions of class, status, and anxiety about the future. Marcia Hutchinson’s Step of Mercy spans 11 years in the life of a rebellious young girl in 1960s Bradford, and in Dominion, Addie E. Sessions examines the pressures placed on black mothers.

Completing the long list are Lucy Apps’ debut Gloria Don’t Speak, about a 19-year-old woman with learning difficulties, Elaine Castillo’s Moderation, which features a content coordinator who falls in love with her boss, and Rozie Kelly’s Kingfisher, about an academic who also becomes obsessed with his colleague.

Joining Gillard on this year’s judging panel are poet and novelist Mona Arshi, writer and broadcaster Salma El Wardani, writer and comedian Cariad Lloyd, and DJ and author Annie McManus.

“These 16 books brilliantly demonstrate the power of imagination in examining the messy work of being human,” said Gillard. “From climate change to artificial intelligence, they navigate the issues of our time with urgency and purpose, immersing us in environments and experiences that are sometimes similar to our own, but often radically different, and exploring identities and perspectives that are often overlooked or forgotten, amid those that are inherently universal and recognizable.”

The shortlist of six books will be announced on April 22, with the winner revealed on June 11 at a ceremony in London, along with the winner of the Women’s Nonfiction Prize.

Yael van der Woden won the Women’s Prize last year for her debut novel The Safekeep, which explores repressed desire and historical amnesia in post-World War II Dutch society. Previous winners of the award also include Barbara Kingsolver, Maggie O’Farrell, Kamila Shamsi and Zadie Smith.

• To browse all the books longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2026, visit guardianbookshop.com. Delivery fees may apply.