Baileys Women’s Fiction Prize Longlist Announced

“Donna Tartt, the author of the widely acclaimed novel The Goldfinch, and Eleanor Catton, whose novel The Luminaries has already won the 2013 Man Booker Prize, are among the 20 women nominated for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction.

     The award, which honors works written in English by women, was known as the Orange Prize until last year, when the liquor company Bailey’s took over as sponsor.
     Four British writers and seven from the United States made the list, along with writers from Ireland, Canada and Nigeria. The American contingent includes a former winner of the Orange Prize, Suzanne Berne, who was nominated for The Dogs of Littlefield. Anna Quindlen was nominated for Still Life With Bread Crumbs.
     The prize, which comes with an award of 30,000 pounds (a little over $50,000), has been won by Americans for the last five years, a statistic that some British critics and scholars see as a disturbing trend in the international rankings, at least as reflected in literary competitions.”
— William Grimes, ArtsBeat
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