INDEPENDENT PUBLISHERS DOMINATE SHORTLIST FOR SWANSEA UNIVERSITY DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE 2024
AYÒBÁMI ADÉBÁYÒ | CALEB AZUMAH NELSON | A. K. BLAKEMORE | MARY JEAN CHAN | JOSHUA JONES | CATHERINE LACEY
www.swansea.ac.uk/dylan-thomas-prize | #SUDTP24 | @dylanthomprize | Media pack here
Swansea, Thursday 21 March 2024: The shortlist for the world’s largest and most prestigious literary prize for young writers – the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize – has been revealed today, featuring six extraordinary, emerging voices whose writing plays with formal inventiveness to explore the timeless themes of grief, identity and family.
Comprising of four novels, one short story collection and one poetry collection – with five titles belonging to independent publishers – this year’s international shortlist is:
- A Spell of Good Things by Ayòbámi Adébáyò (Canongate Books) – novel (Nigeria)
- Small Worlds by Caleb Azumah Nelson (Viking, Penguin Random House UK) – novel (UK/Ghana)
- The Glutton by A. K. Blakemore (Granta) – novel (England, UK)
- Bright Fear by Mary Jean Chan (Faber & Faber) – poetry collection (Hong Kong)
- Local Fires by Joshua Jones (Parthian Books) – short story collection (Wales, UK)
- Biography of X by Catherine Lacey (Granta) – novel (US)
Worth £20,000, this global accolade recognises exceptional literary talent aged 39 or under, celebrating the international world of fiction in all its forms including poetry, novels, short stories and drama. The prize is named after the Swansea-born writer Dylan Thomas and celebrates his 39 years of creativity and productivity. The prize invokes his memory to support the writers of today, nurture the talents of tomorrow, and celebrate international literary excellence.
Namita Gokhale, Chair of Judges, said:
“The Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize has an important role to play in recognising, supporting and nurturing young writers across a rich diversity of locations and genres. The 2024 shortlist has authors from the United States, United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Nigeria and Ghana, and it has been a truly rewarding adventure to immersively read through this creative spectrum of voices.”
The only debut on this year’s shortlist is the astonishing new Welsh talent Joshua Jones, who is in the running for his highly acclaimed short story collection Local Fires – a stunning series of multifaceted stories inspired by real people and real events that took place in his hometown of Llanelli, South Wales.
The sole poet in contention this year is Mary Jean Chan – who was previously shortlisted for the Prize with their debut Fleche in 2020 – and is now recognised for the collection Bright Fear, which fearlessly explores themes of identity, multilingualism and postcolonial legacy.
Three of the four novelists have also gained their second nomination for the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize: British-Ghanaianauthor Caleb Azumah Nelson is in contention for his second novel, Small Worlds, in which he travels from South London to Ghana and back again over the course of three summers to tell an intimate father-son story exploring the worlds we build for ourselves; Nigerian novelistAyòbámi Adébáyò is shortlisted for her dazzling story of modern Nigeria, A Spell of Good Things, and two families caught in the riptides of wealth, power, romantic obsession and political corruption; and US author Catherine Lacey is celebrated for the genre-bending Biography of X, a roaring epic and ambitious novel chronicling the life, times and secrets of a notorious artist.
Completing the shortlist is British novelist A.K. Blakemore, recognised for her darkly exuberant novel The Glutton, which – set to the backdrop of Revolutionary France – is based on the true story of a peasant turned freakshow attraction.
The 2024 shortlist was selected by a judging panel chaired by writer and co-director of the Jaipur Literature Festival, Namita Gokhale, alongside author and lecturer in Creative Writing at Swansea University, Jon Gower, winner of the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature in 2022 and Assistant Professor at Trinity College Dublin, Seán Hewitt, former BBC Gulf Correspondent and author of Telling Tales: An Oral History of Dubai, Julia Wheeler, and interdisciplinary artist and author of Keeping the House, Tice Cin.
Julia Wheeler on A Spell of Good Things by Ayòbámi Adébáyò:
“A Spell of Good Things’ by Ayòbámi Adébáyò takes us deep into the layers of Nigeria’s divided society to create a compelling and at times heartbreaking novel. Weaving social mores and destructive politics, the personal and the national are entwined to leave skilfully drawn characters wondering, what next?”
Tice Cin on Small Worlds by Caleb Azumah Nelson:
“In this deeply loving and rhythmically moving novel, we meet Stephen and his own small worlds, those lives that are ever-present in our orbiting. Paying close attention to a loneliness that comes with the no man's land of being hurtled from one's safe place, Azumah Nelson conveys elsewhereness as a solace, resting into the hand outreached that brings us home, the afterblooms of our grief, and the music of community.”
Jon Gower on The Glutton by A. K. Blakemore:
“This wildly inventive but deeply well-researched novel is distinguished by vivid, poetic prose, telling the story of Tarare, a young man cursed with an unsatiable hunger. Its superbly rendered cast of characters move through a violently changing France and a world fully out of kilter. Glutton, utterly satisfying, leaves the reader hungry for more.”
Tice Cin on Bright Fear by Mary Jean Chan:
“Written with a quiet intimacy, Mary Jean Chan's second collection hums by your ear with gentle, inviting and formally inventive poetry. In a world freighted with exclusion, from the relentless snarls of colonisation to queerphobia, Bright Fear opens the door into a process of building a life for yourself, still. With lucid verse enhanced through their multilingual play, Chan tends to a garden of self-embrace and chosen community, lingering with the fullness of queer actualisation, the breath in a parent's pause, and the roots of tender soothing.”
Namita Gokhale on Local Fires by Joshua Jones:
“Local Fires by Joshua Jones is set in his hometown of Llanelli in West Wakes. This debut collection of short fiction evokes the inertia, stagnation, and vanished innocence of a post-industrial landscape. It ruminates upon toxic masculinity and generational despair , presents comic to tragic cameos of gender and sexual identity, and also a deep window to neurodivergence. A portrait of place and community that is vital , authentic and rooted.”
Seán Hewitt on Biography of X by Catherine Lacey:
“Biography of X, in its exploration of art, relationships, and power, unpicks the stories we tell about our own lives and the lives of others, and asks what happens when we have to re-write those stories in order to go on living. A deeply-imagined, ambitious and beautiful novel that manages to pull off a formal high-wire act with dazzling skill.”
The winner of the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize 2024 will be revealed at a ceremony held in Swansea on Thursday 16 May, following International Dylan Thomas Day on Tuesday 14 May.
Previous winners include Arinze Ifeakandu, Patricia Lockwood, Max Porter, Raven Leilani, Bryan Washington, Guy Gunaratne, and Kayo Chingonyi.
ENDS
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NOTES TO EDITORS:
About the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize
Key Dates for the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize 2024
- Shortlist Event at Waterstones Piccadilly, London: 15 May
- Winner Announcement and award ceremony, Swansea: 16 May
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. Worth £20,000, it is one of the UK’s most prestigious literary prizes as well as 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. The prize is named after the Swansea-born writer, Dylan Thomas, and celebrates his 39 years of creativity and productivity. One of the most influential, internationally renowned writers of the mid-twentieth century, the prize invokes his memory to support the writers of today and nurture the talents of tomorrow.
A Spell of Good Things by Ayòbámi Adébáyò (Canongate Books)
Ayòbámi Adébáyò was born in Lagos, Nigeria. Her debut novel, Stay With Me, won the 9mobile Prize for Literature, was shortlisted for the Baileys Prize for Women’s Fiction, the Wellcome Book Prize and the Kwani? Manuscript Prize. It has been translated into twenty languages and the French translation was awarded the Prix Les Afriques. Longlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize and the International Dublin Literary Award, Stay With Me was a New York Times, Guardian, Chicago Tribune and NPR Best Book of the Year. Ayòbámi Adébàyò splits her time between Norwich and Lagos.
Small Worlds by Caleb Azumah Nelson (Viking, Penguin Random House UK)
Caleb Azumah Nelson is a British-Ghanaian writer and photographer living in South East London. His first novel, Open Water, won the Costa First Novel Award and Debut of the Year at the British Book Awards, and was a number-one Times bestseller. It was also shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, Waterstones Book of the Year, and longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize and the Desmond Elliott Prize. His second novel, Small Worlds was a Sunday Times Bestseller and was shortlisted for The Orwell Prize for Political Fiction. He was selected as a National Book Foundation '5 under 35' honoree by Brit Bennett.
The Glutton by A. K. Blakemore (Granta)
A. K. Blakemore's debut novel, The Manningtree Witches, won the Desmond Elliott Prize 2021, was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, and was a Waterstones Book of the Month. She is the author of two full-length collections of poetry, Humbert Summer and Fondue, which was awarded the 2019 Ledbury Forte Prize for Best Second Collection, and has also translated the work of Sichuanese poet Yu Yoyo. Her poetry and prose has appeared in the London Review of Books, Poetry, the Poetry Review and the White Review, among other publications.
Bright Fear by Mary Jean Chan (Faber & Faber)
Mary Jean Chan is the author of Flèche (Faber & Faber, 2019), which won the Costa Book Award for Poetry and was shortlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize and the Seamus Heaney Centre First Collection Poetry Prize. Bright Fear, Chan's second book, was shortlisted for the 2023 Forward Prize for Best Collection and is currently shortlisted for the Writers' Prize. In 2022, Chan co-edited the acclaimed anthology 100 Queer Poems with Andrew McMillan. A recent judge for the 2023 Booker Prize, Chan is the 2023-24 Judith E. Wilson Poetry Fellow at the University of Cambridge.
Local Fires by Joshua Jones (Parthian Books)
Joshua Jones (he/him) is a queer, autistic writer and artist from Llanelli, South Wales. He co-founded Dyddiau Du, a NeuroQueer art and literature space in Cardiff. His fiction and poetry have been published by Poetry Wales, Broken Sleep Books, Gutter and others. He is a Literature Wales Emerging Writer for 2023, and is currently working with the British Council to connect Welsh and Vietnamese queer writers. Local Fires is his first publication of fiction.
Biography of X by Catherine Lacey (Granta)
Catherine Lacey is the author of the novels Nobody Is Ever Missing, The Answers and Pew, and the short story collection Certain American States. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award and a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship. She has been shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and was named one of Granta's Best of Young American Novelists. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, The New York Times, The Believer and elsewhere. Born in Mississippi, Catherine is currently a fellow at the Dorothy B & Lewis Cullman Center for writers and scholars at the New York Public Library, and is otherwise based in Mexico City.
ABOUT THE JUDGES
Namita Gokhale is a writer and festival director. She is the author of twenty three works of fiction and non-fiction. Her acclaimed debut novel, Paro: Dreams of Passion, was published in 1984. Recent fiction includes The Blind Matriarch and Jaipur Journals. Never Never Land is scheduled for publication in 2024.
Recent non-fiction includes Mystics and Sceptics: In Search of Himalayan Masters. Gokhale’s work spans various genres, including novels, short stories, Himalayan studies, mythology, several anthologies, books for young readers, and a recent play. She is the recipient of various prizes and awards, including the prestigious Sahitya Akademi (National Academy of Literature) Award 2021 for her novel Things to Leave Behind. She is the co-founder and co-director (with William Dalrymple) of the famed Jaipur Literature Festival.
Jon Gower is a former BBC Wales arts and media correspondent who has over 40 books to his name. These include The Story of Wales, which accompanied a landmark TV series, the travelogue An Island Called Smith and Y Storïwr which won the Wales Book of the Year. His latest book is The Turning Tide: A Biography of the Irish Sea. Jon is currently writing a Welsh language historical novel about the polar explorer Edgar Evans, a collection of essays about mountains as well as a volume about the American footballer Raymond Chester, due out in 2024. He lives in Cardiff.
Sean Hewitt is the author of two poetry collections, Tongues of Fire (2020) and Rapture's Road (2024), and the memoir All Down Darkness Wide (2022), all published by Jonathan Cape. His work has been shortlisted for many awards, and he has won The Laurel Prize and The Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. An Assistant Professor at Trinity College Dublin, he is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Julia Wheeler is a writer, journalist and interviewer who worked for the BBC for fifteen years including as the BBC’s Gulf Correspondent based in the UAE and covering the Arabian Peninsula. Julia wrote ‘Telling Tales: An Oral History of Dubai’. She chairs discussions at literature and science festivals across the UK and internationally. Chair of judges for the 2024 Stanfords Travel Book of the Year, Julia is also a trustee of the Stratford Literary Festival. She read Economic and Social History at Swansea University, before postgraduate study in Broadcast Journalism at City, University of London.
Tice Cin is an interdisciplinary artist, freelance editor and cultural consultant from North London and the author of Keeping the House. She has acted and performed at venues such as Edinburgh College of Arts, The Roundhouse and Barbican Centre, and has been commissioned by organisations including Cartier, St. Paul’s Cathedral and Montblanc. She was named one of Complex Magazine’s best music journalists of 2021 and 2022, and has written for places such as DJ Mag and Mixmag. A DJ and music producer, she is preparing an accompanying album for Keeping the House with a host of talented features. Keeping the House has been named one of Guardian’s Best Books of 2021, and has been featured in The Scotsman, New York Times and Washington Post. Tice is a recent recipient of a Society of Authors’ Somerset Maugham Prize, and was shortlisted for both Book of the Year (British Book Awards) and the Desmond Elliott Prize.
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