Sarah Waters’ “The Paying Guests,” Anne Tyler’s “A Spool of Blue Thread,” Ali Smith’s “How to be Both,” and Xiaolu Guo’s “I Am China” are among the twenty books longlisted for the 2015 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction. Established in 1996 as the Orange Prize, the Baileys come with a £30,000 cash prize and a bronze trophy known as a Bessie. It recognizes “excellence, originality and accessibility.”
Previous winners of include Eimear McBride’s “A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing,” Zadie Smith’s “On Beauty,” Lionel Shriver’s “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” and Andrea Levy’s “Small Island.”
The shortlist will be revealed on April 13 and the winner named on June 3.
Here is this year’s Baileys longlist:
- Rachel Cusk — Outline
- Lissa Evans — Crooked Heart
- Patricia Ferguson — Aren’t We Sisters?
- Xiaolu Guo — I Am China
- Samantha Harvey — Dear Thief
- Emma Healey — Elizabeth is Missing
- Emily St John Mandel — Station Eleven
- Grace McCleen — The Offering
- Sandra Newman — The Country of Ice Cream Star
- Heather O’Neill — The Girl Who Was Saturday Night
- Laline Paull — The Bees
- Marie Phillips — The Table of Less Valued Knights
- Rachel Seiffert — The Walk Home
- Kamila Shamsie — A God in Every Stone
- Ali Smith — How to be Both
- Sara Taylor — The Shore
- Anne Tyler — A Spool of Blue Thread
- Sarah Waters — The Paying Guests
- Jemma Wayne — After Before
- PP Wong — The Life of a Banana
[via BBC]
