LONGLIST REVEALED FOR SWANSEA UNIVERSITY DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE 2025
MOSAB ABU TOHA | EMMA GLASS | JO HAMYA | SEÁN HEWITT
FERDIA LENNON | ANDREW MCMILLAN | LOTTIE MILLS | RUTHVIKA RAO
YAEL VAN DER WOUDEN | REBECCA WATSON | ELEY WILLIAMS | YASMIN ZAHER
www.swansea.ac.uk/dylan-
Swansea, Thursday 23 January 2025: The longlist for the world’s largest and most prestigious literary prize for young writers – the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize – is announced today, with authors hailing from across the world including the UK, Palestine, India, the Netherlands, and Ireland.
Worth £20,000, this global accolade recognises exceptional literary talent aged 39 or under, celebrating the international world of fiction in all its forms including poetry, novels, short stories and drama. The prize is named after the Swansea-born writer Dylan Thomas and celebrates his 39 years of creativity and productivity. The prize invokes his memory to support the writers of today, nurture the talents of tomorrow, and celebrate international literary excellence.
Comprising eight novels, two short story collections and two poetry collections, the longlist is:
- Mosab Abu Toha, Forest of Noise (4th Estate) – poetry collection (Palestinian)
- Emma Glass, Mrs Jekyll (CHEERIO publishing) - novel (British)
- Jo Hamya, The Hypocrite (Weidenfeld & Nicolson (Orion)) - novel (British)
- Seán Hewitt, Rapture's Road (Jonathon Cape (Vintage, Penguin Random House)) – poetry collection (British-Irish)
- Ferdia Lennon, Glorious Exploits (Fig Tree, Penguin Random House) – novel (Irish)
- Andrew McMillan, Pity (Canongate Books) – novel (British)
- Lottie Mills, Monstrum (Oneworld (Oneworld Publications)) – short story collection (British)
- Ruthvika Rao, The Fertile Earth (Oneworld (Oneworld Publications)) – novel (Indian)
- Yael van der Wouden, The Safekeep (Viking, Penguin Random House UK) – novel (Dutch)
- Rebecca Watson, I Will Crash (Faber & Faber) – novel (British)
- Eley Williams, Moderate to Poor, Occasionally Good (4th Estate) – short story collection (British)
- Yasmin Zaher, The Coin (Footnote Press) – novel (Palestinian)
This year sees one of the youngest nominated writers in contention for the highly coveted prize – winner of the BBC Young Writers' Award, Lottie Mills age twenty-three – who is in the running for her debut short story collection Monstrum, a beautifully gothic series of tales that captures the experience of characters excluded by a society that cannot accept their difference, and is inspired by her own experiences of living with cerebral palsy and lupus. The second short story writer on the longlist is the Granta Best Young British Novelist Eley Williams, who is recognised for her dazzling new collection Moderate to Poor, Occasionally Good, exploring the nature of relationships both intimate and transient.
This year, two writers have been longlisted for their poetry collections, including the award-winning British-Irish writer Seán Hewitt who is recognisedfor Rapture’s Road, which explores the reciprocal relationship between queer sexuality and the natural world through a journey into the hypnotic ‘nightwoods’. Also nominated is the award-winning Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha, who is celebrated for Forest of Noise, a deeply powerful collection of poems about life in Gaza, sharing first-hand experiences of family, loss and courage from a live war zone.
There is a second Palestinian writer amongst the eight novelists longlisted – Yasmin Zaher – who explores identity and heritage in her debut book The Coin, in which she draws on her own experiences to dissect nature and civilisation, beauty and justice, class and belonging. There are three further debut novelists, all of whom look to the past in their longlisted books: Ireland’s Ferdia Lennon journeys to Ancient Sicily in his highly acclaimed Glorious Exploits; India’s Ruthvika Rao explores love, friendship, betrayal and class in post-partition India within her stunning debut The Fertile Earth; and the Netherlands’ Yale van der Wouden brings domestic drama to the Dutch countryside during the summer of 1961, with a powerful exploration of the legacy of WWII in The Safekeep.
The four further novelists in contention include the immensely talented Welsh writer Emma Glass, who is longlisted for Mrs Jekyll, her tender and devastating reimagination of Stevenson's gothic classic, contorted into a sumptuous and shocking account of modern womanhood. The highly lauded poet Andrew McMillan has been recognised for his gritty and magnificent first novel Pity, which is set across three generations of a South Yorkshire mining family, and is both a lament for a lost way of life as well as a celebration of resilience and the possibility for change.
And finally, strained family relationships are also explored, with Jo Hamya and Rebecca Watson both following up their smash-hit debuts Three Rooms and Little Scratch with extraordinary second novels. Hamya is recognised for The Hypocrite, which considers the fractured dynamic between a father and daughter unravelling over a decade, while Watson delves into the complexities of an estranged brother and sister as they search for forgiveness, in I Will Crash.
The longlisted titles will now be whittled down to a six strong shortlist by an impressive panel of judges chaired by Namita Gokhale, the multi-award-winning Indian writer of more than twenty-five works of fiction and non-fiction (Paro: Dreams of Passion, Things to Leave Behind) as well as the co-director of the famed Jaipur Literature Festival, who is joined by: Professor Daniel Williams, Director of the Richard Burton Centre for the Study of Wales and Co-Director of the Centre for Research into the English Literature and Language of Wales at Swansea University; Jan Carson, award-winning novelist and writer (The Fire Starters, The Raptures); Mary Jean Chan, winner of the Costa Book Award and former Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize shortlistee (Flèche, Bright Fear); and Max Liu, literary critic and contributor to the Financial Times, the i and BBC Radio 4.
Last year's prize was awarded to Caleb Azumah Nelson for his second novel Small Worlds (Viking, Penguin Random House UK). Previous winners also include Arinze Ifeakandu, Patricia Lockwood, Max Porter, Raven Leilani, Bryan Washington, Guy Gunaratne, and Kayo Chingonyi.
The Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize shortlist will be announced on Thursday 20 March followed by a shortlist celebration at the British Library on Wednesday 14 May (International Dylan Thomas Day). The Winner’s Ceremony will be held in Swansea on Thursday 15 May.
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