First Folio Prize Announces Shortlist

Judges today announced the shortlist for the first ever Folio Prize, an international award intended to celebrate books and reading.

According the Folio Prize web site, the prize has been designed “to allow a breadth of writing and opinion to be represented, while encouraging a consistent focus on excellence.”

Sixty books are nominated by the Folio Prize Academy, “an international group of people who write, review and delight in books.” An additional 20 books are called in by the judges, “subsequent to advocacy by publishers, who may write in on behalf of five titles per imprint.”

The judges read the 80 books and produce a shortlist of eight. The contender for the first ever Folio Prize are:

• Red Doc by Anne Carson (Random House/Jonathan Cape)
• Schroder by Amity Gaige (Faber & Faber)
• Last Friends by Jane Gardam (Little, Brown)
• Benediction by Kent Haruf (Picador)
• The Flame Throwers by Rachel Kushner (Random House/Harvill Secker)
• A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride (Galley Beggar Press)
• A Naked Singularity by Sergio De La Pava (Maclehose Editions)
• Tenth of December by George Saunders (Bloomsbury)

From this eight, the judges will choose a winner which will be announced in a ceremony at St. Pancras Renaissance Hotel in London on March 10th, with the winner receiving a cheque for £40,000.