Literary heavyweights including Margaret Atwood and Annie Proulx have been pitted against debut novelists in the longlist for the 2017 Bailey’s women’s prize for fiction, after a record-breaking year for submissions. The 16-strong longlist was chosen from 189 submissions – a substantial increase on previous years, which averaged 150 titles. The Baileys prize celebrates fiction by women writing in English and has been won in the past by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Zadie Smith and Andrea Levy. This year, big names dominate the list of nominees, including three previous winners, four second novels and only three debuts, compared with 11 last year. “There was a massive range of work and we should be excited by the confidence and breadth of books and voices being produced by women writers,” she said.

Source: The Guardian March 08, 2017 00:00 UTC