LONGLISTED FOR THE 2026 WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION

“A gentle and compassionate novel that explores the nuances of queer love and friendship.” The Guardian, Derek Owusu

When a creative writing academic becomes infatuated with his colleague – the poet – it is not long before it begins to threaten his relationship with his partner, Michael. Michael is beautiful. Michael is safe. But the poet is everything he isn’t; she has everything he wants.

While he writes about steel and sex, she dreams about the movements of swallows. While he tends to his budding career, she writes from her big, white house in the woods. As he slips between his old life and this new one, his fixation grows into something more powerful. The poet, his Kingfisher, is his sole focus. He is hypnotised.

But when simultaneous illnesses threaten to destroy the precarious reality he clings to, he’s forced to question what he can and cannot take from someone. This is a novel about grief, power and desire – and the tangles in between that make up a life.

The best of contemporary nature writing from the winners of the second international Nature Chronicles Prize.

Founded in 2020 to mark the global pandemic and serve those who witnessed it, The Nature Chronicles Prize is an international, English-language, biennial literary award for unique, essay-length non-fiction that responds to the time we are in and the natural world as it is. The prize is also a memorial to Prudence Scott, a lifelong nature diarist who died in 2019. Contained within this volume are the outstanding shortlisted entries for the second iteration of the prize.

These winning works address the feelings of responsibility, anxiety and hope that come with living at this time on this planet, and celebrate the species we share the earth with – from insects to blue whales. Together, the essays represent the freshest, most exciting contemporary nature writing by emerging and established authors.

Written by Matt Sowerby, the winning essay is ‘Hope Is the Thing With Flippers’. The shortlisted authors also included in this anthology are: Neillah Arboine, Meg Bertera-Berwick, Emma Harding, David Higgins and Neha Sinha.

The anthology is introduced by nature writer Marchelle Farrell, winner of the 2021 Nan Shepherd prize for nature writing.

Introducing Detective Georges Gorski… From the twice Booker-listed author of His Bloody Project and Case Study. 

Manfred Baumann is a loner. Socially awkward and ill at ease, he spends his evenings surreptitiously observing Adèle Bedeau, the sullen but alluring waitress at his local bistro. But one day, she vanishes into thin air. When Detective Georges Gorski begins investigating her disappearance, Manfred’s repressed world is shaken to its core and he is forced to confront the dark secrets of his past.

The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau effortlessly conjures up an otherworldly atmosphere that simultaneously intrigues and unsettles. A compelling psychological portrayal of a peculiar outsider pushed to the limit by his own feverish imagination, it is by turns haunting, strange and mesmeric. In this new tenth anniversary edition of Graeme Macrae Burnet’s acclaimed debut, the metafictional “translator’s note” is positioned as a foreword, in line with the author’s original idea for this magnificent trilogy of literary mysteries.

From a Costa Book of the Year winner, Booker nominee and double Granta-selected Best Young British novelist comes a searing portrayal of trauma, police abuse and the power of hope.

Teaching nine-year-olds on Zoom. A relationship interrupted by enforced distance. A teenaged son who cannot leave the house. Anna McCormick is already struggling to cope with the unwanted twists 2020 has served up. But when an unstamped envelope arrives overnight, her past begins to cast its own long shadow on the present.

With an uncaring government compounding her woes and a hostile threat drawing closer, Anna must dig deep to keep hope alive for herself and those around her.

This is a twisty, heart-racing page-turner and viscerally rendered portrayal of abuse of power by the state, by the police and by the villains much closer to home.

Taking time for nature poetry is an act of reverence for the natural world, and a path to understanding our part in it.

Nature poetry has been redefined through the centuries, shapeshifting through the major upheavals of our relationship with the landscapes, plants and non-human species with whom we share the earth. As our environment is destabilised and threatened by the climate crisis, we can once again find new meanings, causes for hope and catalysts for action in these poems.

Arranged by season – and full of surprises – this anthology shows the vast breadth of writing on the natural world, and challenges homogenous ideas of what a nature poet can look like. The choices in this anthology see beloved poets celebrated alongside new and emerging writers, who voices echo the urgency of the crisis we now face. Together, they show what we have in common across countries and centuries: an undeniable kinship with nature, and a fierce will to protect it.

These poems will transport you, sending you into the garden, forests and rockpools with searching hands and open eyes.

“Every year for as long as I could remember, I dreaded the shortening days, the fog and the rain. But what if I went outdoors instead?” 

Helen Moat used to hide from winter: she would hunker down inside, yearn for the sun, and wait it out. So when she heard others call it their preferred season, she went on a mission to discover what they saw in the months she found so difficult.

Trying to understand why some of the darkest and coldest countries in the world have the lowest rates of seasonal depression, she dives into cultural practices from warming winter food to traditional book gifting and finds that forcing herself outside in the cold unexpectedly invigorates her and pushes her into deepened human connections.

Journeying across Finland, Iceland, Wales and, just once, escaping to the warmth of Spain, While the Earth Holds its Breath nurtures resilience and determination. Ultimately, it finds a positivity that does not ignore the darkness, but finds something to love there.

The darkness of the night represents something unknowable – even frightening – to many. But when we really look up and into it, we can find celestial light shows, whole ecosystems, and, perhaps, a new perspective. 

The night sky offers something essential – a connection to something bigger than ourselves that can, in turn, help us understand ourselves and each other better. Humans have recognised and tried to make sense of this feeling since ancient times. For so many – from physicists and astronauts to astrologists and artists – the night sky has been a source of inspiration, wonder and exploration.

But now our relationship to dark skies is changing as our access to them is depleted. Light pollution all over Earth can be seen from space, altering the landscape and outlining the coasts. And if we look from Earth into space, we can see artificial light there, too. In this short volume, Anna Levin looks at how we can learn from and nurture our relationship with the night sky even and especially in the context of our changing world.

As you learn how to see and treasure the night sky, a sense of wonder about the universe will help you to understand more about our own pale blue dot.

Chief Inspector Gorski returns … 

In the unremarkable French town of Saint-Louis, a mysterious stranger stalks the streets; an elderly woman believes her son is planning to do away with her; a prominent manufacturer drops dead. Between visits to the town’s hostelries, Chief Inspector Georges Gorski ponders the connections, if any, between these events, while all the time grappling with his own domestic and existential demons.

Graeme Macrae Burnet once again pierces the respectable bourgeois façade of small-town life in this, the concluding part of his trilogy of Gorski novels. He injects a wry humour into the tiniest of details and delves into the darkest recesses of his characters’ minds, but above all provides an entertaining, profound and moving read.

The President is dead. 

Cal Drummond is hiding out deep in the woods of the American South when he hears the news. Once a famous talk show host, he is now a disgraced man living a solitary existence in a cabin, drinking Jack Daniels, enjoying the cover of the trees, and getting on with life as Hank MacPhearson.

But this news – and the journalist who delivers it – will have consequences that reach far back into Cal’s past. They threaten his new life and identity, but they also throw him one final chance: it was an interview that brought about his downfall, but could it be another one, this time with him in the hotseat, that could bring him back to life?

Taking the reader from Scotland to Mexico and from California to Georgia, The Interview is a novel not only about speaking truth to power, but also about speaking truth to oneself.

Community. It’s a word we are used to hearing everywhere from political speeches to fast-food advertisements. But can we really define it?

Using her own experiences, joyful or painful, in communities, as well a strong analysis of political and cultural shifts, Casey Plett shows how overuse of the word has caused it to become disconnected from the reality it signifies.

Here, Plett suggests an alternative, moving towards a definition that acknowledges community as necessary for our existence – a source of comfort, knowledge and love – even while it has the potential to become dogmatic, cliquey or outright harmful.

On Community does crucial work in pushing harder on words and ideas we take for granted. It invites us to be more careful and intentional with our language, to consider how we relate to those we know – and to those we don’t know at all.