The Women’s Prize for Fiction has announced the longlist for its 2024 edition, and in a delightful turn of events, two African authors were included in the compilation of nominees.
Ethiopian-American author Maya Binyam was longlisted for her debut novel Hangman, while Liberian-born Ghanaian writer Peace Adzo Medie made the list for her second novel Nightbloom.
The 2024 Women’s Prize for Fiction Longlist comprises a total of 16 titles. The judging panel for the 2024 Prize includes chair Monica Ali, Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, Laura Dockrill, Indira Varma, and Anna Whitehouse.
In making the announcement, Monica Ali noted the originality and brilliance that permeated each of the longlisted titles.
“With the strength and vitality of contemporary women’s fiction very much in evidence, reading the entries for this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction has been a joyful experience. Each one of these books is brilliant, original and utterly unputdownable. Collectively, they offer a wide array of compelling narratives from around the world, written with verve, wit, passion and compassion”, she said.
Maya Binyam is a writer whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, Bookforum, Columbia Journalism Review, and The New York Times Book Review, among other publications. She is a contributing editor at The Paris Review, and she has previously worked as an editor at Triple Canopy and The New Inquiry, and as a lecturer in the New School’s Creative Publishing and Critical Journalism program. Her book, Hangman, is the tragicomic journey of a man who returns home to sub-Saharan Africa after 26 years of living in exile in America. It is a hilarious and twisted odyssey, peopled by phantoms and tricksters, aid workers and taxi drivers, the relatives and riddles that lead him along a circuitous path towards the truth.
Peace Adzo Medie is an academic and writer of both fiction and nonfiction. In 2020, she published her debut novel His Only Wife as well as her scholarly work Global Norms and Location Action: The Campaigns to End Violence Against Women in Africa. Her longlisted book, Nightbloom, takes a keen-eyed look at family, class and discrimination in Ghana and the US, in this irresistible story of female friendship, the relationships that shape us and the people we never quite leave behind.
The Women’s Prize for Fiction is one of the world’s most successful, influential and popular literary prizes, championing and amplifying women’s voices and nurturing a global community of readers. The Prize was established in 1996 to highlight and remedy the imbalance in coverage, respect and reverence given to women writers versus their male peers, creating a platform for exceptional writing by women to shine.
The Prize is awarded annually to the author of the best full-length novel of the year written in English and published in the UK. The winner receives £30,000, anonymously endowed, and the ‘Bessie’, a bronze statuette created by the artist Grizel Niven.
The winner of this year’s award will be announced at Women’s Prize Live, taking place on 12th June 2024.