Longlist announced for Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize 2026

Gosia Buzzanca

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 UK, US, Ireland, Pakistan, and Nigeria.

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.

With an average age of 32, and comprising seven novels, three poetry collections, and two short story collections, the longlist is:

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

Isabelle Baafi, Chaotic Good (Faber) – poetry

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

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

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

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

Kanza Javed, What Remains After a Fire (W.W. Norton & Company) – short stories

Esther Ifesinachi Okonkwo, The Tiny Things Are Heavier (Manilla Press, Bonnier Books) – novel

Derek Owusu, Borderline Fiction (Canongate) – novel

Issa Quincy, Absence (Granta) – novel

Saba Sams, Gunk (Bloomsbury Circus) – novel

Vanessa Santos, Make a Home of Me (Dead Ink Books) – short stories

Seven out of the twelve nominees are recognised for their debut work, making this one of the freshest longlists in years, celebrating new voices on the English-language literary panorama.

Three of the longlisted authors have previously been nominated for the prestigious award, showing the writers’ consistent production of exceptional literary work.

Award-winning British-Irish writer Seán Hewitt, nominated in 2025 for his poetry collection Rapture’s Road, is longlisted this year for his debut novel Open, Heaven, which follows the life of two sixteen-year-old boys transforming each other’s lives in a remote village in the North of England.

Welsh based Saba Sams, whose acclaimed short story collection Send Nudes was shortlisted in 2023, is this year in the running with Gunk, her electrifying debut novel exploring love and desire, chaos and control – and family in all its forms.

In addition, Derek Owusu, who was nominated for the prize in 2023 for his novel Losing the Plot, is in contention again for Borderline Fiction, a highly original contemporary tale about a young man’s search for an authentic way to love and be loved.

There are four further novels on the list – all of which are debuts: Nigeria’s Esther Ifesinachi Okonkwo which explores migration, love, grief, and identity for a Nigerian immigrant in the US in The Tiny Things Are Heavier; Oxford’s Harriet Armstrong is recognised for To Rest Our Minds and Bodies, an unconventional tale set in an unnamed university campus, mapping the disintegration of a young woman’s sense of self and her struggle to keep a grip on reality.

We Pretty Pieces of Flesh by Doncaster-born and raised Colwill Brown, which takes us through Doncaster’s schoolyards, alleyways and nightclubs, laying bare the intimate treacheries of adolescence; and, finally, in Absence by Issa Quincy, an unnamed narrator exhumes a childhood memory of his mother reading a poem, before he becomes an embodied archive for a number of forgotten stories.

With three nominees, poetry is well represented in this year’s longlist.

Poet, editor and critic Isabelle Baafi is recognised for her debut collection Chaotic Good – a poetic exploration of the ways in which power accumulates, shifts and is relinquished, framed by the story of a toxic marriage.

Also longlisted is Joy Is My Middle Name by American writer Sasha Debevec-McKenney, which documents the coming-of-age of a young woman through her twenties and emerging into her thirties.

Finally, Bristol-based, award-winning poet Suzannah V. Evans is longlisted for Under the Blue – a collection full of lyricism and desire about the shimmering beauty of life and the realities of care.

Two short story collections are longlisted, including the debut collection by Scotland-based Vanessa Santos, Make a Home of Me, featuring horror stories set in houses that should provide protection, but instead turn on their inhabitants.

Meanwhile, Pakistani author Kanza Javed is nominated for What Remains After a Fire, a collection of eight unflinching stories, featuring characters desperately trying to forge a path for themselves at the margins of society.

The longlisted titles will now be whittled down to a six strong shortlist by an impressive panel of judges 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.

Honour

Speaking exclusively to Nation Cymru last week Irenosen said: “I’m honoured to be the Chair of Judges for this year’s Dylan Thomas Prize working alongside esteemed fellow judges.

“As the world’s most prestigious prize for young writers, it’s always a cultural highlight. I look forward to reading some brilliant books.”

Irenosen 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.

Elaine Canning, Director of the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize, said: “We are thrilled to share the twelve wonderful writers and books featured on the 2026 longlist for the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize.

“Representing the UK, US, Ireland, Pakistan and Nigeria, the works of these hugely talented novelists, short story writers and poets from across the world are fresh, original and bold in content and form, exploring identity and family, the relationship between memory and storytelling, and the challenges of realities on micro and macro levels.

“Our hugest congratulations to them all.”

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.

The Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize shortlist will be unveiled on Thursday 19 March, followed by a shortlist celebration event in London (13 May), with the winner revealed on International Dylan Thomas Day (14 May) at an evening ceremony in Swansea.