Dylan Thomas Prize Shortlist 2023
By Bookshop.org UK
Dylan Thomas Prize Shortlist 2023
By Bookshop.org UK
Launched in 2006, the annual Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize is one of the most prestigious awards for young writers, aimed at encouraging raw creative talent worldwide. It celebrates and nurtures international literary excellence.
Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head: Shortlisted for the 2022 Felix Dennis Prize
Warsan Shire
£12.99 £12.34Maggie Shipstead on Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head by Warsan Shire “Bless the Daughter Raised By a Voice in Her Head by Warsan Shire is the kind of poetry collection that takes up residence in your psyche and becomes a part of you, echoing when you least expect it. Shire’s words are deeply specific but also full of inclusive—even universal—resonance about the complexities of family, self, and home."
Send Nudes: By the winner of the BBC National Short Story Award 2022
Saba Sams
£9.99 £9.49Rachel Long on Send Nudes by Saba Sams (Bloomsbury Publishing) “An exciting, empowering collection of short stories, full of knowing, daring, wit and range. I could not put this book down! Each story its own unique universe of what it is/can be to navigate and experience girl/womanhood. My only gripe is that I wish this book existed when I was in my teens or in my twenties!”
I'M A FAN - Sheena Patel
Sheena Patel
£17.23Di Speirs on I'm a Fan by Sheena Patel (Rough Trade Books) “We loved Patel’s book for its immediacy, vibrancy and shafts of spikey humour. While no-one would want the relationship within the pages, we found ourselves compelled to read on, rooting for our narrator, hoping she’d execute an escape from it all – the man, the woman and the shallow ephemera she captures so pithily. A memorable and exciting new voice on the literary scene, we are sure we’ll hear more of Sheena Patel.”
God's Children Are Little Broken Things: Winner of the 2023 Dylan Thomas Prize
Arinze Ifeakandu
£14.99Maggie Shipstead on God's Children Are Little Broken Things by Arinze Ifeakandu (Orion, Weidenfeld & Nicolson) “Arinze Ifeakandu’s story collection, God’s Children Are Little Broken Things, brings incisive authorial insight and compassionate, compelling humanity to the lives of its characters. The persistence of queer love and desire in the face of oppression is beautifully rendered.”
Seven Steeples
Sara Baume
£11.99 £11.39Jon Gower on Seven Steeples by Sara Baume (Tramp Press) “This beautifully quiet and quietly beautiful novel maps out two lovers’ lives with custodial care and in delicate, precision prose. In Bell and Sigh, Sarah Baume has created a marvellously shambolic and memorable pair of characters, setting them in a creaking house in a wind-blown Irish landscape, where they walk their dogs and grow ever closer. Tender and true, this is a book that lingers like the coconut scent of gorse in full flower.”
Limberlost
Robbie Arnott
£14.99Prajwal Parajuly on Limberlost by Robbie Arnott (Atlantic Books) “We loved this book for its stunning sentences, its quiet meditation on masculinity, and its ability to conjure up (as well as transport us to) 1940s Tasmania. There’s a beautiful tenderness to Robbie Arnott’s Limberlost that impressed us. We are thrilled to have it on the 2023 shortlist.”
The Dylan Thomas Prize one of the world’s largest literary prizes for young writers. Awarded for the best published literary work in the English language, written by an author aged 39 or under, the Prize celebrates the international world of fiction in all its forms including poetry, novels, short stories and drama.