Acclaimed US novelists Susan Choi and Lily King are among the writers shortlisted for this year’s Women’s prize for fiction, in a lineup dominated by debut authors and independent publishers.

The six titles contending for the £30,000 award range from a US campus love story to a coming of age tale set in 1960s Bradford, but are connected by their consideration of “the complexity and beauty of the female experience”, said the former prime minister of Australia and judging chair Julia Gillard.

Choi is on the list for her sixth novel Flashlight, which was also shortlisted for last year’s Booker prize. A historical family saga, spanning from small town Indiana to North Korea, it reckons with a father’s disappearance, and was described in a Guardian review as “all kinds of big: capacious of intent and scope and language and swagger.”

King is recognised for Heart the Lover, also her sixth work of fiction, in which a 1980s campus love triangle reignites in mid-life. “This story of first love between college kids is vivid, moving and witty,” wrote Rebecca Wait in her Guardian review.

More than half of the titles in contention are debuts, with four first-time novelists – Addie E Citchens, Virginia Evans, Marcia Hutchinson, and Rozie Kelly – featured alongside the two more established names.

US writer Citchens was selected for Dominion, which follows the experiences of two female protagonists in a Black church community of the American south.

Evans made the shortlist for The Correspondent, an epistolary novel in which an elderly woman deals with ageing and her past by writing letters to loved ones and strangers.

British author Hutchinson is up for The Mercy Step, following the coming of age of a young Black girl in 1960s Bradford, whose family are Windrush generation immigrants.

Completing the shortlist is Kingfisher by British writer Rozie Kelly, about a young creative writing academic who develops an infatuation with his older female colleague.

Four of the titles were published by independent presses: Canongate (Heart the Lover), Europa Editions UK (Dominion), Cassava Republic Press (The Mercy Step), and Saraband (Kingfisher).

Despite being among the most prominent names on the longlist, Katie Kitamura and Kit de Waal failed to make the shortlist; Kitamura with her fifth novel Audition, which was shortlisted for the 2025 Booker prize, and De Waal, who was the chair of the fiction prize’s judging panel last year, for The Best of Everything.

Other titles longlisted for this year’s prize were Paradiso 17 by Hannah Lillith Assadi, Gloria Don’t Speak by Lucy Apps, Moderation by Elaine Castillo, The Benefactors by Wendy Erskine, The Others by Sheena Kalayil, A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar, Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy, and A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing by Alice Evelyn Yang.

Gillard whittled down the 16-strong longlist alongside the poet and novelist Mona Arshi, the author and broadcaster Salma El-Wardany, the writer and comedian Cariad Lloyd, and DJ and author Annie Macmanus.

The prize was open to titles written in the English language and published in the UK between 1 April 2025 and 31 March 2026.

The winner will be announced on 11 June at a ceremony in London, alongside the winner of its sister award, the Women’s prize for nonfiction.

Founded in 1996, the Woman’s prize for fiction was created in response to the Booker prize’s failure to shortlist any women writers in 1991. Past winners include Zadie Smith, Barbara Kingsolver, Maggie O’Farrell and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

Last year’s prize went to Dutch debut novelist Yael van der Wouden for The Safekeep, a postwar romantic and family saga set in the Netherlands, which judges praised for its “masterful blend of history, suspense and historical authenticity”.

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