Our 2026 Women's Prize shortlist predictions
It's that time of year again! Possibly our favourite awards season here at Rare Birds—the Women's Prize for Fiction and Non-fiction. With the fiction shortlist announcement just around the corner, we wanted to continue our annual tradition of predicting which titles we think will make the cut.
A bit of info about the prize: it's open to women writers worldwide whose novels are published in the UK and written in English. Since the prize's conception, there's always been three core things judges are looking for—excellence, originality, and accessibility.
And who better to judge storytelling than some of the most acclaimed storytellers out there. This year's fiction judging panel is chaired by Julia Gillard, who's joined by Mona Arshi, Salma El-Wardany, Cariad Lloyd, and Annie Macmanus.
Even though last year we only got 2/6 of our guesses correct, we don't have to talk about that! Hopefully this year will be our redemption arc. That being said, narrowing an incredible longlist from 16 books down to 6 finalists is not an easy task.
Be sure to take a look at the fiction longlist here before diving into our shortlist predictions below.
The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
Every morning at around half past ten, Sybil Van Antwerp sits down to write letters – to her brother, to her best friend, to the president of the university who will not allow her to attend a class she desperately wants to take, to her favourite authors to tell them what she thinks of their latest books. Because at seventy-three, Sybil has used her correspondence – full of sharp humour and hard-earned wisdom – to make sense of the world. But beyond the page, she has spent the last thirty years keeping the people who love her at arms’ length.
Until letters from someone she had put out of her mind land on her doorstep, forcing her to reckon with her past mistakes. For as Sybil is about to learn, it’s never too late to write a few post-scripts.
Heart the Lover by Lily King
You knew I'd write a book about you someday. Our narrator understands good love stories - their secrets, their highs and free falls. But her greatest love story, the one she lived, never followed the rules.
She was in her senior year of college when star students Sam and Yash swept her into an intoxicating world of academic fervour, rapid-fire banter and raucous card games.
Their lives became quickly intertwined - with friendship but also with unpredictable passions and the intimations of first love. Decades later, she is a successful writer, living a comfortable life with her husband and children, when a surprise visit brings the past crashing into the present, forcing her to confront the decisions and deceptions of her youth. Written with the precision of poetry and the emotional tide of an epic, Heart the Lover is a celebration of literature and the life-long echoes of young love.
Audition by Katie Kitamura
One woman, the performance of a lifetime. Or two. An exhilarating, destabilising novel that asks whether we ever really know the people we love.
Two people meet for lunch in a Manhattan restaurant.
She’s an accomplished actress in rehearsals for an upcoming premiere. He’s attractive, troubling, young – young enough to be her son. Who is he to her, and who is she to him? In this compulsively readable, brilliantly constructed novel, two competing narratives unspool, rewriting our understanding of the roles we play every day – partner, parent, creator, muse – and the truths every performance masks, especially from those who think they know us most intimately.
A guardian and a thief by megha majumdar
In a near-future Kolkata beset by flooding and famine, Ma, her two-year-old daughter Mishti, and her elderly father Dadu are just days from leaving the collapsing city behind to join Ma’s husband in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
After procuring long-awaited visas from the consulate, they pack their bags for the flight to America. But in the morning they awaken to discover that Ma’s purse, with all the treasured immigration documents within it, has been stolen.
Set over the course of one week, A Guardian and a Thief tells two stories: the story of Ma’s frantic search for the thief while keeping hunger at bay during a worsening food shortage; and the story of Boomba, the thief, whose desperation to care for his family drives him to commit a series of escalating crimes whose consequences he cannot fathom.
Wild Dark shore by Charlotte McConaghy
A family on a remote island. A mysterious woman washed ashore. A storm gathering force.
Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny weather-lashed island that is home to the world's largest seed bank. As Shearwater risks being lost to rising sea levels, the island's researchers have fled, and only the Salts remain. Until, during the worst storm in living memory, a stranger washes ashore.
The family nurse the woman, Rowan, back to strength, but it seems she isn't telling the whole truth about why she's there. And when Rowan stumbles upon sabotaged radios and a recently dug grave, she realises that she's not the only one on the island with a secret.
A beast slinks towards beijing by Alice Evelyn Yang
Qianze has not seen her father in eleven years, since he walked out of her life the night of her fourteenth birthday and disappeared without a trace. But then she gets a call-there is a man on the porch of her childhood home, and he's asking for her. This man isn't the Ba Qianze remembers: he is much older, more fragile, and worst of all, haunted by a half-forgotten prophecy.
While Qianze wrestles with what she owes this near-stranger, Ba begins telling stories of his past. From his bloody days as a Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution to his mother's youth under Japanese occupation, he circles around the prophecy he came to deliver. Qianze has always longed to know more about her family history, but as Ba reveals a past far darker than she could have imagined, she finds herself plagued by strange visions-fox spirits trail her on her evening commute, a terrifying jackalope stalks her nightmares, and the looming prophecy slinks ever closer.