The shortlist for the 2026 Women’s Prize for Fiction has been announced, highlighting the talents of several writers and publishers from Manchester and the North.

The Women’s Prize for Fiction was established in 1996 to redress the balance in the coverage and respect given to women writers in contrast to their male peers. Each year, the prize is awarded to the author of the best full-length novel written in English and published in the UK. The winner receives £30,000, along with a bronze statuette known as a ‘Bessie,’ created and donated by the late artist Grizel Niven.

This year’s shortlist includes The Mercy Step by Marcia Hutchinson, which creates a tender portrait of precocious rule-breaker Mercy as she navigates growing up in Bradford in 1962.

Marcia Hutchinson was born to Windrush generation Jamaican parents in the UK in 1962. The first pupil from her comprehensive school to attend Oxford, she earned an MA in Law and worked as a lawyer before founding educational publisher Primary Colours, which she ran until 2014. Moving to Manchester in 2012, she became a community activist and was eventually elected as a Labour Councillor in 2021. Now a full-time writer, she is an active member of the Black Writers’ Guild. Marcia co-authored The Blackbirds of St Giles (published by Simon & Schuster) and made her solo debut with The Mercy Step.

The shortlist also features Kingfisher by Rozie Kelly. Kingfisher comes from Manchester-based indie publisher Saraband Books, and explores the power dynamics at play when a young male creative writing academic becomes infatuated with an older lauded poet colleague.

Rozie Kelly is a novelist based in Yorkshire. After reading English Literature and Creative Writing she moved to Hebden Bridge, where she works for the Arvon Foundation, hosting creative writing courses. She was shortlisted for the 2023 PFD Queer Fiction Prize, selected for the inaugural Prototype Development Prize for emerging writers, and won the 2024 NorthBound Book Award for Kingfisher, which is her debut novel.

The North was also represented on the Prize’s long-list, which featured The Others by Sheena Kalayil, published by Manchester indie Fly on the Wall Press. The novel is set in East Germany in 1989, and follows three people from vastly different backgrounds who become friends against the backdrop of quiet revolution.

Sheena Kalayil is a critically acclaimed Manchester-based author and teacher. The Others is Kalayil’s fourth novel, continuing her profound examination of untold stories from the crossroads of history and human experience. Her third book, The Wild Wind, drew inspiration from her own nomadic upbringing shuttling between India, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Kalayil’s debut novel, The Bureau of Second Chances, announced her as a major new literary talent, winning the prestigious Writers’ Guild Award for Best First Novel and being shortlisted for the Edward Stanford Prize for Fiction with a Sense of Place.

This year’s Chair of Judges, Julia Gillard, former Prime Minister of Australia, is joined on the Women’s Prize for Fiction judging panel by poet, novelist and essayist, Mona Arshi, author, presenter, poet and speaker, Salma El-Wardany, writer, podcaster, actor and comedian, Cariad Lloyd, and author, broadcaster and DJ, Annie Macmanus.

Manchester City of Literature would like congratulate all the featured writers and publishing houses on this fantastic achievement.