The Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize ~ Longlist 2022

 

Through themes of identity, conflict and love, the 2022 long list comprises eight novels, two poetry collections and two short story collections:

A Passage North – Anuk Arudpragasam (Granta)

 What Noise Against the Cane – Desiree Bailey (Yale University Press)

 Keeping the House – Tice Cin (And Other Stories)

 Auguries of a Minor God – Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe (Faber)

The Sweetness of Water – Nathan Harris (Tinder Press/Headline)

No One is Talking About This – Patricia Lockwood (Bloomsbury Circus)

 Milk Blood Heat – Dantiel W. Moniz (Atlantic Books)

Hot Stew – Fiona Mozley (John Murray Press)

 Open Water – Caleb Azumah Nelson (Viking, Penguin General)

 Acts of Desperation – Megan Nolan (Jonathan Cape)

 Peaces - Helen Oyeyemi (Faber)

 Filthy Animals – Brandon Taylor (Daunt Books Publishing)

The international longlist for one of the world’s largest literary prizes for young writers – the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize – will be announced on Thursday 3rd February. From Sri Lanka to Trinidad, Texas, and Ireland via the Middle East, this year’s longlist features a powerful, international collection of writers who are offering platforms for under-represented voices.

This year’s longlist celebrates female voices from around the world and includes: the gritty debut novel by interdisciplinary London artist Tice Cin titled Keeping the House, American novelist Patricia Lockwood’s meditation on love, language and human connection in No One is Talking About This, Dantiel W. Moniz’s debut collection of short inter-generational stories in Milk Blood Heat that contemplate human connection, race, womanhood, inheritance, and the elemental darkness in us all, British writer Fiona Mozley’s urban comedy Hot Stew, the honest and darkly funny debut novel Acts of Desperation by emerging star of Irish literature Megan Nolan, and British-born Prague-based Helen Oyeyemi’s exploration of what it means to be seen by another person in Peaces.

There are also two female poets up for the £20,000 Prize including Desiree Bailey for her lyrical quest for belonging and freedom in What Noise Against the Cane as she draws on her cultural identity and upbringing in Trinidad and Tobago, as well as Indian-born Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe whose first poetry collection Auguries of a Minor God follows two different journeys, the first of love and the wounds it makes and the second following a family of refugees who have fled to the West from conflict in an unspecified Middle Eastern country.

The debut novelist line-up is further completed by the contemporary classic The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris who fuses together historical fiction and the complex reality of society today, and the achingly beautiful love story Open Water (now sold in 13 territories worldwide) by 25-year-old British-Ghanaian writer Caleb Azumah Nelson who shines a light on race and masculinity. Additionally among the 12 authors on the 2022 longlist are Sri Lankan writer Anuk Arudpragasam for his masterful novel, A Passage North, which explores age and youth, loss and survival in the wake of the devastation of Sri Lanka's 30-year civil war and Brandon Taylor’s Filthy Animals that brings together quietly devastating stories of young people caught up in violence and desire, while longing for intimacy.

Chaired by Jaipur Literature Festival’s founder-director and award-winning author Namita Gokhale, the longlisted titles will now be whittled down to a six strong shortlist by an impressive panel of judges including novelist, playwright, and winner of the 2006 Dylan Thomas Prize Rachel Trezise, celebrated Poet and novelist Luke Kennard who recently won the 2021 Forward poetry prize, novelist and Swansea University lecturer Alan Bilton, and Nigerian British author Irenosen Okojie who was awarded an MBE For Services to Literature in 2021.

Worth £20,000, it is one of the UK’s most prestigious literary prizes as well as the world’s largest literary prize for young writers. Awarded for the best published literary work in the English language, written by an author aged 39 or under, the Prize celebrates the international world of fiction in all its forms including poetry, novels, short stories and drama.

The shortlist will be announced on the 31st March, followed by the Winner’s Ceremony held in Swansea on 12th May, two days before International Dylan Thomas Day.

Follow on Twitter @dylanthomprize #SUDTP22

@midaspr

Dylan Thomas Centenary...

Dylan Thomas

was born in Swansea on the 27th October

Fern Hill

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs

About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,

The night above the dingle starry,

Time let me hail and climb

Golden in the heydays of his eyes,

And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns

And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves

Trail with daisies and barley

Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns

About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,

In the sun that is young once only,

Time let me play and be

Golden in the mercy of his means,

And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves

Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,

And the sabbath rang slowly

In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay

Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air

And playing, lovely and watery

And fire green as grass.

And nightly under the simple stars

As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,

All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars

Flying with the ricks, and the horses

Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white

With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all

Shining, it was Adam and maiden,

The sky gathered again

And the sun grew round that very day.

So it must have been after the birth of the simple light

In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm

Out of the whinnying green stable

On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house

Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,

In the sun born over and over,

I ran my heedless ways,

My wishes raced through the house high hay

And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows

In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs

Before the children green and golden

Follow him out of grace,

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me

Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,

In the moon that is always rising,

Nor that riding to sleep

I should hear him fly with the high fields

And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.

Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,

Time held me green and dying

Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

****