Women rule in 2016 Costa Book Awards shortlist

Rose Tremain, Sarah Perry and Kate Tempest are among the 20 nominated writers who are contenders for the Costa Awards' £30,000 top prize

Feature by The Skinny | 23 Nov 2016

This year’s shortlists for the Costa Book Awards were announced today, and pleasingly it’s female authors who dominate, with 14 of the 20 nominations across the awards’ five categories (First Novel, Novel, Biography, Poetry and Children’s Book) going to women. 

Three previous winners of the award – the only major UK book prize open solely to authors resident in the UK and Ireland – feature in the Novel Award category: Maggie O'Farrell for This Must Be the Place, Rose Tremain for The Gustav Sonata and Sebastian Barry for Days Without End. The latter’s book The Secret Scripture was named 2008 Costa Book of the Year. Sarah Perry also competes in this category for her much-praised book The Essex Serpent.

Rapper, poet, playwright and novelist Kate Tempest leads the all-female poetry category with her collection Let Them Eat Chaos, alongside Melissa Lee-Houghton, Alice Oswald and Denise Riley. In our review of Tempest’s album based on the collection, we wrote that it is “undoubtedly a contender for one of the most important pieces of music released this year,” adding that “Let Them Eat Chaos dazzles with its linguistically-created, vivid imagery, and ability to evoke overwhelming atmosphere through its sound.”

Smash Hits pop journalist and music writer Sylvia Patterson is up for the biography prize for her memoir I’m Not with the Band: A Writer’s Life Lost in Music. Books by Hisham Matar, Keggie Carew and John Guy, the world-leading authority on the Tudors, also compete for this prize.

The greenhorns shortlisted for the First Novel category include former competitive figure skater Susan Beale for her book The Good Guy alongside Kit de Waal for My Name is Leon, Guinevere Glasfurd for The Words in My Hand and Francis Spufford for Golden Hill.

The final Costa award is for best children’s book. The shortlist is made up of Francesca Simon, the author of the bestselling Horrid Henry series, as well as Brian Conaghan, Patrice Lawrence and debut children’s writer, Ross Welford.

“I'm certain that readers of all tastes will find something to enjoy in this fantastic selection of books,” said Dominic Paul, Managing Director of Costa. “My thanks go to the category judges who read so extensively and chose so carefully, and many congratulations to the shortlisted authors."

Winners in the five categories, who each receive £5,000, will be announced on 3 Jan. One of the winners from the five categories will also be named overall winner of the 2016 Costa Book of the Year and receive £30,000, which will be announced at the Costa Book Awards ceremony in central London on 31 Jan 2017.


The full list of nominees is below:

Novel
Sebastian Barry, Days Without End (Faber & Faber)
Maggie O’Farrell, This Must Be the Place (Tinder Press)
Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent (Serpent’s Tail)
Rose Tremain, The Gustav Sonata (Chatto & Windus)

First novel
Susan Beale, The Good Guy (John Murray)
Kit de Waal, My Name Is Leon (Viking)
Guinevere Glasfurd, The Words in My Hand (Two Roads)
Francis Spufford, Golden Hill (Faber & Faber)

Biography
Keggie Carew, Dadland: A Journey Into Uncharted Territory (Chatto & Windus)
John Guy, Elizabeth: The Forgotten Years (Viking)
Hisham Matar, The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between (Viking)
Sylvia Patterson, I’m Not With the Band: A Writer’s Life Lost in Music (Sphere)

Poetry
Melissa Lee-Houghton, Sunshine (Penned in the Margins)
Alice Oswald, Falling Awake (Jonathan Cape Poetry)
Denise Riley, Say Something Back (Picador)
Kate Tempest, Let Them Eat Chaos (Picador)

Children’s books
Brian Conaghan, The Bombs That Brought Us Together (Bloomsbury)
Patrice Lawrence, Orangeboy (Hodder Children’s Books)
Francesca Simon, The Monstrous Child (Faber & Faber/Profile Books)
Ross Welford, Time Travelling With a Hamster (HarperCollins Children’s Books)