WORLD’S LARGEST PRIZE FOR YOUNG WRITERS: SWANSEA UNIVERSITY DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE 2026

I’m excited and delighted to share this year’s incredible shortlist for world’s largest and most prestigious literary award for young writers: Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize. With thanks to Henrietta at Midas on behalf of Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize for the invitation.

📚 THE 2026 SHORTLIST 📚

The 6 titles that make up this year’s stellar Swansea University-Dylan Thomas Prize shortlist!

The shortlist for the world’s largest and most prestigious literary prize for young writers – the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize – is announced today featuring six extraordinary, emerging voices, whose writing explores love and beauty, society and gender – with a distinct focus on coming-of-age stories.

Comprising four novels and two poetry collections, the shortlist is:

– To Rest Our Minds and Bodies by Harriet Armstrong (Les Fugitives) – novel (UK)

– We Pretty Pieces of Flesh by Colwill Brown (Chatto & Windus, Vintage) – novel (UK)

– Joy is My Middle Name by Sasha Debevec-McKenney (Fitzcarraldo Editions) – poetry (US)

– Under the Blue by Suzannah V. Evans (Bloomsbury Poetry) – poetry (UK)

– Open, Heaven by Seán Hewitt (Jonathan Cape, Vintage) – novel (UK)

– Borderline Fiction by Derek Owusu (Canongate) – novel (UK)

“This is a marvellous, galvanising shortlist. We’re thrilled by the scope, breadth and depth of these works across forms. These books have profound things to say about the ways we live, what it means to be human and overall are propulsive reads that imbue the writing space with new energies.”

Irenosen Okojie MBE, Chair of Judges

The shortlisted titles were selected by a judging panel chaired by Irenosen Okojie MBE, award-winning Nigerian British author of Curandera, Butterfly Fish, Speak Gigantular and Nudibranch, and former Women’s Prize for Fiction judge, who is joined by: Joe Dunthorne, award-winning Swansea-born poet and novelist; Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe, poet, pacifist and fabulist;Prajwal Parajuly, multi-award nominated author of The Gurkha’s Daughter and Land Where I Flee; Eley Williams,acclaimed author and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

📚The shortlisted authors📚

HARRIET ARMSTRONG | COLWILL BROWN | SASHA DEBEVEC-MCKENNEY | SUZANNAH V. EVANS | SEÁN HEWITT | DEREK OWUSU

Harriet Armstrong, To Rest Our Minds and Bodies (Les Fugitives)

Harriet Armstrong was born and raised in Oxford. In 2024, aged 24, she was a Resident at the Giancarlo DiTrapano Foundation for Literature and the Arts. Her first novel, To Rest Our Minds and Bodies, was published by Les Fugitives in June 2025, and is published or forthcoming in French, German, Spanish and Turkish translation. Her short stories have been published in Forever Magazine, the London Magazine, Granta, HEAT Literary Magazine (Giramondo), Kismet, the Virginia Quarterly Review, the Georgia Review, and elsewhere. She lives and works in London. 

Colwill Brown, We Pretty Pieces of Flesh (Chatto & Windus, Vintage)

Colwill Brown was born and raised in Doncaster, South Yorkshire. She holds an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin, where she received a James A. Michener Center Fellowship, and an MA in English Literature from Boston College. Her work has appeared in Granta, Prairie Schooner and elsewhere. For fifteen years, she’s lived with ME/CFS, a debilitating neurological disease triggered by a virus that, due to systemic medical neglect, currently has no treatment. A proud Donny lass, she claims to have played bass guitar in (nearly) every rock venue on South Yorkshire’s toilet circuit.

Sasha Debevec-McKenney, Joy Is My Middle Name (Fitzcarraldo Editions)

Sasha Debevec-McKenney’s poems have appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Review of Books and the Yale Review. She was the 2020-2021 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the University of Wisconsin and is currently a creative writing fellow at Emory University. She lives in Decatur, Georgia.

Suzannah V. Evans, Under the Blue (Bloomsbury Poetry)

Suzannah V. Evans is a poet, researcher and educator. She is the author of Brightwork and Marine Objects / Some Language, and the editor of All Keyboards are Legitimate: Versions of Jules Laforgue. Her poetry has been awarded the Ivan Juritz Prize for Creative Experiment and a Northern Writers’ Award, performed at international festivals and broadcast on BBC Radio. She lives in Bristol, where she teaches literature and creative writing. Under the Blue is her debut collection.

Seán Hewitt, Open, Heaven (Jonathan Cape, Vintage)

Seán Hewitt was born in 1990. He is the author of two poetry collections, Tongues of Fire and Rapture’s Road, and a memoir, All Down Darkness Wide. He collaborated with the artist Luke Edward Hall on 300,000 Kisses: Tales of Queer Love from the Ancient World. Hewitt has received the Laurel Prize and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and been shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. He lectures at Trinity College Dublin and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Derek Owusu, Borderline Fiction (Canongate)

Derek Owusu is an award-winning writer and poet from North London. He has written for the BBC, ITV, Granta, Esquire, GQ and Tate Britain. In 2019, Owusu collated, edited and contributed to SAFE: On Black British Men Reclaiming Space, an anthology exploring the experiences of Black men in Britain. His first novel, That Reminds Me, won the Desmond Elliott Prize for best debut novel published in the UK and Ireland. His novel Losing the Plot was longlisted for the Jhalak Prize and the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2023. The same year, he was selected as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists.

Joe Dunthorne on To Rest Our Minds and Bodies by Harriet Armstrong:

“An electrifying experience, a brilliantly sustained journey into love and obsession – told with a voice that is fresh, funny and completely its own.”

Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe on We Pretty Pieces of Flesh by Colwill Brown:

“A full-throated, intimate look at girlhood, growing up, what it means and what it takes to feel like you belong. An anthem to first friendships, to the places and people that make us and change us, to the things we can and cannot say, to the selves that we become.”

Irenosen Okojie on Joy is My Middle Name by Sasha Debevec-McKenney:

“Glorious. This is a collection teeming with multitudes. Unstoppable, hilarious and incandescent.”

Eley Williams on Under the Blue by Suzannah V. Evans:

“Alert to the intimacies of caring and keening, of all-too-easy frictions and fraught hard-won joys, Evans’ collection is an intricate and rewarding work of contemporary literature.”

Prajwal Parajuly on Open, Heaven by Seán Hewitt:

“A tender exploration of love and desire—heart-rending and deeply lyrical.”

Irenosen Okojie on Borderline Fiction by Derek Owusu:

“A forensic meditation on complex Black British male identity. Full of heart and tenderness.”

📚Who will be crowned our winner on May 14th?📚

The British Library will host a shortlist celebratory event on Wednesday 13 May with the winner announced during a ceremony in Swansea on Thursday 14 May, marking International Dylan Thomas Day.

🎉📚🏆 Join this year’s prize winner and @IrenosenOkojie at the magnificent @hayfestival on 31st May! 🎉📚🏆

🎟️ Tickets: bit.ly/sudtphay26

📚THE SWANSEA UNIVERSITY DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE📚

Launched in 2006, the annual Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize is one of the most prestigious awards for young writers, aimed at encouraging raw creative talent worldwide. It celebrates and nurtures international literary excellence.

Worth £20,000, it is one of the UK’s most prestigious literary prizes as well as one of the world’s largest literary prizes 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.

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 one of the most influential, internationally renowned writers of the mid-twentieth century,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.

Last year’s prize was awarded to Palestinian writer Yasmin Zaher for her novel The Coin, and previous winners include Caleb Azumah Nelson, Arinze Ifeakandu, Patricia Lockwood, Max Porter, Raven Leilani, Bryan Washington, Fiona McFarlane, and Kayo Chingonyi.