Eley Williams, Yael van der Wouden and Ferdia Lennon are among the young writers shortlisted for this year’s Swansea University Dylan Thomas prize.
Seán Hewitt, Yasmin Zaher and Rebecca Watson also made the shortlist for the £20,000 award, which celebrates fiction in any form – including novels, short stories, poetry and drama – by writers aged 39 or under in honour of the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, who died at that age.
Rapture's Road by Seán Hewitt (Cape)
Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon (Fig Tree)
The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden (Viking)
I Will Crash by Rebecca Watson (Faber)
Moderate to Poor, Occasionally Good by Eley Williams (4th Estate)
The Coin by Yasmin Zaher (Footnote)
The “varied and diverse” shortlist “encompasses the historical, the contemporary, and the timeless” and showcases “startlingly fresh writing, style and energy”, said writer and judging chair Namita Gokhale.
Williams was chosen for Moderate to Poor, Occasionally Good – the only short story collection on the list. In the “concise masterpiece” of the title story, the announcer of the shipping forecast considers its significance to listeners, wrote Sarah Crown in her Guardian review.
Van der Wouden made the shortlist for The Safekeep, which was also shortlisted for the 2024 Booker and is on the longlist for this year’s Women’s prize for fiction. The novel explores the postwar treatment of Jews in the Netherlands through a family drama. “This is an impressive debut,” wrote Rachel Seiffert in her Guardian review. “She creates and sustains atmospheres deftly, and ultimately delivers a thrilling story.”
Lennon was picked for his novel Glorious Exploits, which won the Waterstones debut fiction prize last summer. Set in Syracuse in 412BC in the aftermath of Athens’ failed invasion of Sicily, the story follows two potters who decide to stage an adaptation of Medea in a quarry where Athenian soldiers are held captive, using the prisoners as actors.
Hewitt’s Rapture’s Road, which explores love and loss, is the only poetry collection on this year’s shortlist. “Hewitt’s poetry is a hide and seek of the self. It reveals and conceals”, wrote Kate Kellaway in the Observer.
Watson was shortlisted for I Will Crash, a novel narrated by a woman dealing with the death of her abusive brother. Completing the shortlist is Zaher’s The Coin, about a wealthy Palestinian woman who gets involved in a pyramid scheme reselling designer Birkin bags.
The six-strong shortlist was chosen from a longlist of 12, which also featured Forest of Noise by Mosab Abu Toha, Mrs Jekyll by Emma Glass, The Hypocrite by Jo Hamya, Pity by Andrew McMillan, Monstrum by Lottie Mills, and The Fertile Earth by Ruthvika Rao.
The winner will be announced on 15 May at a ceremony in Swansea, Thomas’s birthplace. Joining Gokhale on the judging panel are writer Jan Carson, poet Mary Jean Chan, critic Max Liu and academic Daniel Williams.
Past winners of the prize include Patricia Lockwood, Max Porter and Arinze Ifeakandu. Last year, Caleb Azumah Nelson won the award for his second novel, Small Worlds.
