Here is the shortlist for the 2020 Costa Book Awards.
The Costa Book Awards, inaugurated in 1971, are a set of annual literary awards, which recognize and honor British and Irish writers of the English language. The Award comes with £5,000, and the winner from each category will be announced on January 4th.
This year, Evan Boland’s posthumous poetry collection made the shortlist, along with Michelle Gallen’s debut novel and Susanna Clarke’s sophomore novel.
“These poems record, in breath-taking detail the lives of ordinary women: mothers, daughters, grandmothers,” said the judges of The Historians, which has been described as the culmination of Eavan Boland’s signature themes, exploring the ways in which the hidden, sometimes all-but-erased stories of women’s lives can powerfully revise our sense of the past.
The Costa Book of the Year winner will receive another £30,000 cash prize, and this winner will be announced on January 26th, 2021. Previous winners include Helen Macdonald and Hilary Mantel.
Congrats to all!
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2020 Costa Book Awards Shortlist
FIRST NOVEL
Michelle Gallen, Big Girl, Small Town
Sairish Hussain, The Family Tree
Ingrid Persaud, Love After Love
Karen Raney, All the Water in the World
NOVEL
Susanna Clarke, Piranesi
Tim Finch, Peace Talks
Denise Mina, The Less Dead
Monique Roffey, The Mermaid of Black Conch: A Love Story
BIOGRAPHY
Julian Barnes, The Man in the Red Coat
Rachel Clarke, Dear Life
Lee Lawrence, The Louder I Will Sing
Jeff Young, Ghost Town: A Liverpool Shadow Play
POETRY
Caroline Bird, The Air Year
Eavan Boland, The Historians
Rachel Long, My Darling from the Lions
Martha Sprackland, Citadel
CHILDREN’S LITERATURE
Darren Charlton, Wranglestone
Natasha Farrant, Voyage of the Sparrowhawk
Jenny Pearson, The Super Miraculous Journey of Freddie Yates
Meg Rosoff, The Great Godden
[h/t Irish Times]
