What a truly wonderful way to wake up on a Wednesday morning! We’re thrilled to announce both Kate Atkinson and M.L. Stedman, two of our fantastic authors, have been longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. A highly prestigious award, previously known as the Orange prize, our two brilliant writers now await further news alongside 18 others as the panel decides on a shortlist:

The longlist

Kate Atkinson - Life After Life

M L Stedman - The Light Between Oceans

Kitty Aldridge A Trick I Learned From Dead Men

Ros Barber The Marlowe Papers

Shani Boianjiu The People of Forever are Not Afraid

Gillian Flynn Gone Girl

Sheila Heti How Should A Person Be?

AM Homes May We Be Forgiven

Barbara Kingsolver Flight Behaviour

Deborah Copaken Kogan The Red Book

Hilary Mantel Bring Up the Bodies

Bonnie Nadzam Lamb

Emily Perkins The Forrests

Michèle Roberts Ignorance

Francesca Segal The Innocents

Maria Semple Where’d You Go, Bernadette

Elif Shafak Honour

Zadie Smith NW

Carrie Tiffany Mateship with Birds

G Willow Wilson Alif the Unseen

This year’s panel is chaired by actor Miranda Richardson and includes BBC journalist Razia Iqbal, writer Rachel Johnson and novelist JoJo Moyes. The overall winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction will be announced in June.

More information about the Women’s Prize for Fiction can be found here.

We’re publishing the mesmerising Life After Life by Kate Atkinson tomorrow and the heartbreaking The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman is already available in paperback and hardback. Further details about these titles can be found below and via our website.

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

What if you had the chance to live your life again and again, until you finally got it right?

During a snowstorm in England in 1910, a baby is born and dies before she can take her first breath.

During a snowstorm in England in 1910, the same baby is born and lives to tell the tale.

What if there were second chances? And third chances? In fact an infinite number of chances to live your life? Would you eventually be able to save the world from its own inevitable destiny? And would you even want to?

Life After Life follows Ursula Todd as she lives through the turbulent events of the last century again and again. With wit and compassion, Kate Atkinson finds warmth even in life’s bleakest moments, and shows an extraordinary ability to evoke the past. Here she is at her most profound and inventive, in a novel that celebrates the best and worst of ourselves.

The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman

A boat washes up on the shore of a remote lighthouse keeper’s island. It holds a dead man and a crying baby. The only two islanders, Tom and his wife Izzy, are about to make a devastating decision.

They break the rules and follow their hearts. What happens next will break yours.