We are thrilled to announce the Bath Novel Award 2020 Shortlist.

The Bath Novel Award is an international prize for emerging novelists. This year’s judge is literary agent Jenny Savill and the winner’s prize is £3,000.  Shortlist prizes include manuscript feedback and agent introductions. One longlisted writer will win an online place worth £1,800 on Edit your Novel the Professional Way from Cornerstones Literary Consultancy.

1,735 extracts and synopses were submitted between December 2019 and May 2020 and matched with readers who voted for a 35 strong longlist announced in June. The fulls of longlisted novels were read during July with their exceptional standard making it particularly hard to choose our final five.

The cast of this year’s shortlist include: a young widow reeling from her photographer husband’s suicide; a Bristolian archer and a soothsaying Japanese aunt; a Chinese teen on the run from a snakehead cockling gang; a Cornish caravan dwelling letter writer extraordinaire; a reclusive sister blindsided by revived interest in the disappearance of  her twin in New South Wales.

As the prize is judged “blind” we will reveal the writers’ names when the winner is announced on September 24th. In the meantime, many congratulations to the writers of this year’s five standout manuscripts: 

AFTERWARDS

THE ARROW GARDEN

THE COCKLERS

THE DOVE

WAKE

COMING AUGUST 2020
WINNER OF THE BATH NOVEL AWARD 2019
Pre-orders: Amazon | Waterstones

‘A tense, unsettling and emotionally engaging whydunnit that grips from the first page’ SOPHIE HANNAH

‘A complete triumph. an intelligent and deeply satisfying thriller with such vivid characters it’s impossible to believe they aren’t real’
ELIZABETH HAYNES

‘Gritty, tense, and superbly plotted. The ending left me breathless’
HARRIET TYCE