We are delighted to announce the Bath Novel Award 2021 Shortlist.
The Bath Novel Award is an international prize for emerging novelists and this year’s judge is literary agent Julia Silk.
The winning author will receive £3,000 one longlisted writer will win a place worth £1,800 on Cornerstones Literary Consultancy’s acclaimed course Edit your Novel the Professional Way.
Over 2,000 manuscripts were submitted between December 2020 and May 2021 by writers based in 52 countries. Extracts and synopses were individually matched with readers who then voted for a 31 strong longlist which was announced in June. During July each longlisted novel has been read in full with this year’s extraordinarily high standard resulting in a longer than usual shortlist.
The cast of 2021’s shortlisted books include: a Gen Z Londoner whose mother rose to dubious fame after falling from a plane over Iceland; a lonely Delhiite schoolboy with a guru-esque vulture and disappearing ma; a young Cornish woman home from the city for the memorial of her childhood sweetheart; an audacious C16th hoodwinker searching for a roof over her head; the mother of a spirited and volatile autistic boy who is struggling to settle at school; a British administrator finding her feet in Singaporean high-life as WW2 closes in.
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 six standout manuscripts:
CALL ME SUZY
GHOST TIME
HIDDENLAND
MEET ME AT THE SURFACE
SOMETHING OF A HOAX
STOLEN THREADS
BATH NOVEL AWARD RECIPIENTS
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)
“It’s been a long journey to get here… I had to go in the wrong direction to find everything I’d been looking for.”
Interview: debut novelist and BNA listee LORRAINE BROWN
“Not going to lie, I might have cried.”
Interview: debut novelist and BNA listee SARAH LAWTON
