PRESS RELEASE: Longlist for $150,000 USD Carol Shields Prize for Fiction Revealed
The 2024 Longlist includes 9 authors from the United States and 6 authors from Canada, spanning novels, short story collections, and fiction in translation.
Toronto / New York, March 8, 2024 — The Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, the largest English-language literary prize for women and non-binary writers in the world, has revealed its longlist of 15 U.S. and Canadian authors. This year’s nominees were chosen by an esteemed Jury of writers including Jen Sookfong Lee (Jury Chair), Laila Lalami, Claire Messud, Dolen Perkins-Valdez, and Eden Robinson.
The 2024 Prize longlist authors and books are:
Cocktail: Stories by Lisa Alward (Biblioasis)
Birnam Wood: A Novel by Eleanor Catton (McClelland & Stewart)
Dances: A Novel by Nicole Cuffy (One World)
Daughter: A Novel by Claudia Dey (Doubleday Canada)
Coleman Hill by Kim Coleman Foote (SJP Lit)
Brotherless Night by V. V. Ganeshananthan (Random House)
Between Two Moons by Aisha Abdel Gawad (Doubleday)
Loot: A Novel by Tania James (Alfred A. Knopf)
You Were Watching from the Sand: Short Stories by Juliana Lamy (Red Hen Press)
The Future by Catherine Leroux, translated by Susan Ouriou (Biblioasis)
I Have Some Questions for You: A Novel by Rebecca Makkai (Viking)
A History of Burning: A Novel by Janika Oza (McClelland & Stewart)
A Council of Dolls: A Novel by Mona Susan Power (Mariner Books)
Chrysalis: Stories by Anuja Varghese (House of Anansi)
Land of Milk and Honey: A Novel by C Pam Zhang (Riverhead Books)
“The Jury for this year's Carol Shields Prize is so very pleased to share this exceptional and diverse longlist. All the authors have written remarkable works of fiction that illuminate who we are—our histories, flaws, ambitions, and loves—and who we could be. Congratulations to all the longlisted writers and their publishers,” shared Jen Sookfong Lee, on behalf of the Jury for the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction.
The winner of the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction will receive $150,000 USD and a residency at Fogo Island Inn, and the four finalists will each receive $12,500 USD. The prize award for 2024 has been generously provided by BMO Financial Group, which also sponsored the award in 2023 for the winner, Fatimah Asghar (When We Were Sisters), and four finalists: Daphne Palasi Andreades (Brown Girls), Talia Lakshmi Kolluri (What We Fed to the Manticore), Suzette Mayr (The Sleeping Car Porter), and Alexis Schaitkin (Elsewhere).
Future key dates for the 2024 Prize include:
Tuesday, April 9 — Shortlist announcement of 5 finalists.
Monday, May 13 — Winner announced during a live event in Toronto, Ontario.
The Carol Shields Prize for Fiction aims to address continued inequality in the literary world, especially among women and non-binary authors. Novels, short story collections, and graphic novels written by women and non-binary authors and published in the United States and Canada are eligible for the Prize. Should a translated work win the Prize, $100,000 will be awarded to the author and $50,000 to the translator.
In addition to the annual Prize, the Carol Shields Prize Foundation supports nearly a dozen residencies, mentorships, and scholarship opportunities for women and non-binary writers from historically marginalized communities. These partnerships include collaborations with Tin House, Diaspora Dialogues, the Institute of American Indian Arts, and the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, among others.
The awards for the The Carol Shields Prize for Fiction are generously provided by BMO Financial Group.
