Mary Jean Chan, Caleb Azumah Nelson and AK Blakemore are among the shortlistees for this year’s Swansea University Dylan Thomas prize.
The award, worth £20,000, celebrates poetry, novels, short stories and drama by writers aged 39 and under in honour of the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, who died at that age.
Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, Catherine Lacey and Joshua Jones also made the shortlist. Jones was the only debut author selected, with his short story collection Local Fires, inspired by real events and people in his home town of Llanelli, south Wales. The collection “evokes the inertia, stagnation, and vanished innocence of a post-industrial landscape,” said judging chair and writer Namita Gokhale.
Chan, the only poet on the shortlist, was chosen for their collection Bright Fear, which explores identity, multilingualism and postcolonial legacy. “Written with a quiet intimacy, Mary Jean Chan’s second collection hums with gentle, inviting and formally inventive poetry”, said judge and writer Tice Cin.
Adébáyọ̀ was shortlisted for A Spell of Good Things, in which “domestic strife and the political tensions of modern Nigeria bristle against each other”, wrote Michael Donkor in a Guardian review of the novel.
The six-strong shortlist was selected from a longlist of 12, which also featured Penance by Eliza Clark, The Coiled Serpent by Camilla Grudova, Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein, Close to Home by Michael Magee, Open Up by Thomas Morris and Divisible By Itself and One by Kae Tempest.
Nelson was shortlisted for Small Worlds, a novel set between London and Ghana across three summers and described as “deeply loving and rhythmically moving” by Cin.
Joining Cin and Gokhale on the judging panel are the writers Jon Gower, Seán Hewitt and Julia Wheeler. The winner of the prize will be revealed at a ceremony held in Swansea, Thomas’s home town, on Thursday, 16 May.
Blakemore was shortlisted for The Glutton, a historical novel inspired by the story of Tarare, a French peasant living through the French Revolution whose insatiable hunger made him a freak show attraction. “This is clearly a tale that begs to be fictionalised, and it’s hard to think of a better writer to do it than Blakemore,” said Sandra Newman in a Guardian review.
Completing the shortlist was Lacey’s Biography of X, which chronicles the life and secrets of an enigmatic artist. “There is so much that’s impressive about this book,” wrote Marcel Theroux in a Guardian review. “It makes you think afresh about America and American history. It roves over the muddy trenches of identity politics while saying things that are original and not parti pris. At its centre, X is a charismatic, tantalising figure who takes aim at all orthodoxies.”
Lacey, Chan and Nelson have previously been shortlisted for the prize, while Adébáyọ̀ has previously been longlisted. Prior winners of the prize include Max Porter, Bryan Washington and Patricia Lockwood. In 2023, Arinze Ifeakandu won the prize for his debut short story collection, God’s Children Are Little Broken Things.
