News & Reviews

WORD: Joyce Carol Oates, Curtis Sittenfeld make Orange Prize longlist

Eight Americans -- ranging from legendary veteran Joyce Carol Oates to newcomer Curtis Sittenfeld -- and five debutants have made the longlist in The Orange Prize for Fiction, a top annual award for work written by a woman, judges announced.

Americans in the running for the UK-based award include Joyce Carol Oates, whose bizarre title alone for Rape: A Love Story, published by Atlantic, earns our vote. Her haunting novel tells of the brutality and cowardice that overtake Niagara Falls in the aftermath of an attack on the Fourth of July.

Other Americans making the 2006 longlist include Lorraine Adams for her novel Harbor, published by Portobello; Alice Greenaway’s debut novel White Ghost Girls (Atlantic); Nicole Krauss’ sophomore effort The History of Love (Viking); Sue Miller’s Lost in the Forest (Bloomsbury); Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep (Picador); and Meg Wolitzer for The Position (Chatto & Windus)
 
Marilynne Robinson, whose novel Gilead (Virago) earlier took the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, also made the longlist and has to be considered an early favorite. The U.S. edition for Gilead was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

Candidates will compete for a 30,000-pound prize and a limited edition bronze known as a ‘Bessie’, created and donated by the artist Grizel Niven.

The Orange Prize, set up in 1996 to celebrate and promote fiction by women throughout the world, is awarded for the best novel of the year written by a woman in the English language. Judges emphasize excellence, originality and accessibility, among other criteria. Any woman writing in English, whatever her nationality, country of residence, age or subject matter, is eligible.

Previous winners of the Orange Prize for Fiction are Lionel Shriver for We Need to Talk About Kevin (2005), Andrea Levy for Small Island (2004), Valerie Martin for Property (2003), Ann Patchett for Bel Canto (2002), Kate Grenville for The Idea of Perfection (2001), Linda Grant for When I Lived in Modern Times (2000), Suzanne Berne for A Crime in the Neighbourhood (1999), Carol Shields for Larry’s Party (1998), Anne Michaels for Fugitive Pieces (1997), and Helen Dunmore for A Spell of Winter (1996).

Judges will announce Orange Prize for Fiction shortlist on April 26 and the Awards ceremony will take place on June 6.

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