Every Book That Made The 2022 Women's Prize For Fiction Longlist

What do some of this year’s must-reads such as Creatures of Passage by Morowa Yejidé, Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead, and The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki have in common? Aside from immediately being added to our Summer reading list, they’ve also just been longlisted for the 2022 Women’s Prize for Fiction.

Celebrating the amazing talent from debut and acclaimed writers from across the world, Yejidé, Shipstead, and Ozeki are joined on the longlist by writers including Elif Shafak, Leone Ross, and Meg Mason, among others. Announced on International Women’s Day, the list was selected by a panel of judges that featured Mary Ann Sieghart, Lorraine Candy, Dorothy Koomson, Anita Sethi, and Pandora Sykes. The winner of the award will receive £30,000 as well as a limited-edition bronze figurine called the ‘Bessie’ designed by British sculptor Grizel Niven.

“Choosing just 16 novels from 175 submissions was a marathon task,” Chair of Judges and author Sieghart said. “After a lively and passionate discussion, my fellow judges were delighted to find that our 16 favourite novels were incredibly diverse, written by women of all ages from all over the world, covering different genres, and from publishers large and small.”

Sieghart added that the panel were “confident that this wonderful, eclectic and inspiring longlist will offer something to entrance every reader, both male and female.”

Last year’s prize was won by Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi, which was described by the judges as “a truly original, unexpected flight of fancy that melds genres and challenges preconceptions about what books should be.”

Read the full longlist below:

• Build Your House Around My Body by Violet Kupersmith
• Careless by Kirsty Capes
• Creatures of Passage by Morowa Yejidé
• Flamingo by Rachel Elliot
• Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead
• Remote Sympathy by Catherine Chidgey
• Salt Lick by Lulu Allison
• Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason
• The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki
• The Bread the Devil Knead by Lisa Allen-Agostini
• The Exhibitionist by Charlotte Mendelson
• The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie Walton
• The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak
• The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller
• The Sentence by Louise Edrich
• This One Sky Day by Leone Ross

These sixteen novels will be whittled down to just six titles for the shortlist on April 27 before the winner of the 2022 Women’s Prize for Fiction is announced on June 15.