The sixteen semifinalists for the 2008 Dylan Thomas Prize, which is given to a poet or fiction writer under thirty years of age for a work in English, were announced on Sunday. Writers from anywhere in the world are eligible for the biennial £60,000 (approximately $119,768) prize, with this year’s longlist featuring poets, novelists, and short story writers from South Africa, the United Kingdom, Kenya, the United States, and Iran.
The semifinalists are:
The Orientalist and the Ghost (Doubleday) by Susan Barker
Ishq and Mushq (Doubleday) by Priya Basil
Trouble Came to the Turnip (Carcanet Press) by Caroline Bird
The Secret (Bloodaxe Books) by Zoe Brigley
Zoology (HarperPress) by Ben Dolnick
Blood Kin (Viking) by Ceridwen Dovey
Submarine (Random House) by Joe Dunthorne
Oystercatchers (Fourth Estate) by Susan Fletcher
Satsuma Sun Mover (Lazy Gramophone Press) by Adam Green
Blackmoor (Simon & Schuster) by Edward Hogan
Sons and Other Flammable Objects (Grove Press) by Porochista Khakpour
The Boat (Knopf) by Nam Le
Children of the Revolution (Jonathan Cape) by Dinaw Mengestu
There is an Anger that Moves (Carcanet Press) by Kei Miller
God’s Own Country (Viking) by Ross Raisin
St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves (Knopf) by Karen Russell
“I believe that this year’s longlist is one of the strongest ever seen amongst any international literary prize,” said prize founder Peter Stead in a press release, “and the fact that all these writers are under thirty years old clearly demonstrates the talent that is rising amongst the ranks of the world’s top writers.”
Stead will judge along with Andrew Davies, Peter Florence, Kurt Heinzelman, Edward Nawotka, Miranda Sawyer, and Owen Sheers.
The Dylan Thomas Prize was first awarded in 2004 on the ninetieth anniversary of Thomas’s birth, and is currently sponsored by the University of Wales. In 2006, the Dylan Thomas Prize partnered with Swansea Life magazine to introduce an additional biennial award of £1,000 (approximately $1,996), given to honor a work by a writer under twenty-one. The finalists for that award have not been announced.
The shortlist of Dylan Thomas Prize finalists will be revealed in September, and the winner, along with the award for young writers honoree, will be announced at a ceremony in Swansea, Thomas's home city in Wales, on November 3.
