We are delighted to announce the Bath Novel Award 2022 Shortlist.

Established in 2013, the Bath Novel Award is an international prize for emerging novelists writing for adults and / or young adults. Recipients include Kim Sherwood for Testament and Abi Daré for The Girl With The Louding Voice.

The author of the winning manuscript, as judged by literary Agent Nelle Andrew, will receive £3,000. All shortlistees receive a compilation of readers’ comments on their full and one longlisted writer will receive a place worth £1,800 on Cornerstones Literary Consultancy and Professional Writing Academy’s acclaimed course Edit your Novel the Professional Way.

Almost two thousand novel extracts and synopses were submitted between 1st December 2021 and 31st May 2022 by writers based in 66 countries. Extracts and synopses were individually matched with readers who then voted for a 28 strong longlist which was announced in June. During July each longlisted novel has been read in full with this year’s high standard resulting in a longer than usual shortlist.

The cast of 2022’s shortlisted books include: an Elizabethan love triangle; the neighbours of a missing make-up artist; a widower taking ashes to New Zealand; a pianist on Denmark’s wild Jutland coast; a grandaughter and the grandfather her family said was dead; a Victorian detective, a Crimean nurse and a murder at a hospital run by nuns.

As the prize is judged ‘blind’ we will reveal the writers’ names when the winner is announced on September 21st. In the meantime, many congratulations to the writers of this year’s six standout manuscripts:

ALMOST STRANGERS

AS SOFT AS DREAMS

THE LAST GIFT OF EMMELINE DAVIES

THE TASTE OF STRAWBERRIES

VICTORIANA

WE ARE WOLVES

Bath Novel Award Recipients

2021 ABHISHEK PRASAD for Ghost Time (Greyhound Literary Agency 2021)

2020 ANDREW J KING for The Arrow Garden (Aderyn Press 2023)

2019 KATE SIMANTS for A Ruined Girl (Viper Books 2020)

2018 ABI DARÉ for The Girl with the Louding Voice (Hodder & Stoughton 2020)

2017 SOPHIE DRAPER for Cuckoo (Avon Books 2018)

2016 KIM SHERWOOD for Testament (Riverrun 2018)

2015 CLARISSA GOENAWAN for Rainbirds (Soho Press 2017)

2014 JOANNA BARNARD for Precocious (Ebury Press 2015)