The Rathbones Folio Prize 2021 Longlist

The longlist for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2021 announced January 20 includes one sff work and a memoir by a well-known sff writer. The Prize is given “to celebrate the best literature of our time, regardless of form.”

Monique Roffey’s The Mermaid of Black Conch, “a feminist revision of an old Taino myth,” is on the list, as is Carmen Maria Machado’s nonfiction work about domestic abuse, In the Dream House: A Memoir. 

All books considered for the prize are nominated by the Folio Academy, an international group of more than 250 writers and critics. The three judges for the 2021 prize are poet Roger Robinson, the Irish writer, editor and broadcaster Sinéad Gleeson and novelist and short story writer Jon McGregor.

Here is the complete longlist:

  • Just Us – Claudia Rankine (Allen Lane)
  • Indelicacy – Amina Cain (Daunt Books)
  • The Appointment – Katharina Volckmer (Fitzcarraldo Editions)
  • As You Were – Elaine Feeney (Harvill Secker)
  • The Geez – Nii Ayikwei Parkes (Peepal Tree Press)
  • The Mermaid of Black Conch – Monique Roffey (Peepal Tree Press)
  • Poor – Caleb Femi (Penguin)
  • OK, Let’s Do Your Stupid Idea – Patrick Freyne (Penguin Ireland)\
  • The Actual – Inua Ellams (Penned In The Margins)
  • Shuggie Bain – Douglas Stuart (Picador)
  • My Darling from the Lions – Rachel Long (Picador)
  • English Pastoral – James Rebanks (Allen Lane)
  • The Pink Line: The World’s Queer Frontiers – Mark Gevisser (Profile Books)
  • In the Dream House: A Memoir – Carmen Maria Machado (Serpent’s Tail)
  • Strangers – Rebecca Tamás (Makina Books)
  • RENDANG – Will Harris (Granta)
  • Entangled Life – Merlin Sheldrake (The Bodley Head)
  • handiwork – Sara Baume (Tramp Press)
  • A Ghost in the Throat – Doireann Ní Ghríofa (Tramp Press)
  • How Much of These Hills is Gold – C Pam Zhang (Virago)