Women's Prize for Fiction longlist celebrates a year of infinite variety, says judge

Formerly known as the Orange Prize, the £30,000 Women's Prize for Fiction has longlisted books by 20 writers

These include Booker and Costa-winner Hilary Mantel and previous Orange Prize-winners Zadie Smith and Barbara Kingsolver.

'The task of reducing the list of submissions from over 140 to just 20 books was always going to be daunting,' said Miranda Richardson, chair of judges, 'but this year's infinite variety has made the task even trickier. The list we have ended up with is, we believe, truly representative of that diversity of style, content and provenance, and contains those works which genuinely inspired the most excitement and passion amongst the judges.'

The longlist is:

• Kitty Aldridge, A Trick I Learned From Dead Men (Jonathan Cape)

• Kate Atkinson, Life After Life (Doubleday)

• Ros Barber, The Marlowe Papers (Sceptre)

• Shani Boianjiu, The People of Forever are Not Afraid (Hogarth)

• Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl (Weidenfed & Nicolson)

• Sheila Heti, How Should a Person Be? (Harvill Secker)

• A.M. Homes, May We Be Forgiven (Granta)

• Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behaviour (Faber & Faber)

• Deborah Copaken Kogan, The Red Book (Virago)

• Hilary Mantel, Bring Up The Bodies (Fourth Estate)

• Bonnie Nadzam, Lamb, (Hutchinson)

• Emily Perkins, The Forrests (Bloomsbury Circus)

• Michele Roberts, Ignorance (Bloomsbury)

• Francesca Segal, The Innocents (Chatto & Windus)

• Maria Semple, Where D'you Go, Bernadette? (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

• Elif Shafak, Honour (Viking)

• Zadie Smith, NW (Hamish Hamilton)

• M.L. Stedman, The Light Between Oceans (Doubleday)

• Carrie Tiffany, Mateship With Birds (Picador)

• G. Willow Wilson, Alif the Unseen (Corvus Books)

The shortlist for the Women's Prize for Fiction will be announced on 16 April, and the winner on 5 June.

For all the latest publishing news, subscribe to Writing Magazine or download our app

Register and sign up for our newsletter for late-breaking news, more competitions and exclusive content