All posts tagged: Fiction

The 2026 Women’s Prize for Fiction Shortlist Has Been Announced

The 2026 Women’s Prize for Fiction Shortlist Has Been Announced

Published by Jenni Sidey

The Women’s Prize for Fiction was established in 1996 to highlight and celebrate exceptional fiction by women, which was often overlooked in favor of fiction by men. It has since become one of the most influential and popular literary prizes in the English-speaking world. Each year, it awards £30,000 (about $40,511) to “the author of the best full-length novel of the year written in English and published in the UK.” Award-winners also receive the “Bessie,” a bronze statuette designed by the artist Grizel Niven. This year’s shortlist is full of debuts, independently published works, and books by publishers that have never been nominated for the prize before. They explore human connection, the individual’s role in prewritten social roles, and more. The 2026 Women’s Prize for Fiction Shortlist Flashlight by Susan Choi (Jonathan Cape, Vintage, Penguin Random House UK) Dominion by Addie E. Citchens (Europa Editions UK) The Correspondent by Virginia Evans (Michael Joseph, Penguin Random House UK) The Mercy Step by Marcia Hutchinson (Cassava Republic Press) Kingfisher by Rozie Kelly (Saraband) Heart the Lover by …

Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlist dominated by debut novelists as judges name books that ‘profoundly moved us’

Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlist dominated by debut novelists as judges name books that ‘profoundly moved us’

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter The shortlist for this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction has been revealed – and four of the six novels to have made the cut are debut works. Addie E Citchens and Virginia Evans are nominated for their respective works, Dominion and The Correspondent, while Marcia Hutchinson has been recognised for The Mercy Step and Rozie Kelly for Kingfisher. The foursome are joined on the shortlist by two established American novelists – Susan Choi, who is nominated for her sixth book, Flashlight, and Lily King, whose seventh book Heart the Lover follows a university love triangle that is reignited years later. This year’s judging panel is being chaired by the former prime minister of Australia, Julia Gillard, who has hailed all of the shortlisted authors for penning novels that “intrigued and profoundly moved” the judges. The nominees for this year’s Women’s Prize …

Is Bob Dylan Hawking AI Historical Fiction Now?

Is Bob Dylan Hawking AI Historical Fiction Now?

Published by Jenni Sidey

This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Is Bob Dylan posting AI stories? Maybe. Read about that weird situation along with recommendations for queer historical fiction and books centering Black women throughout history. The latter two will be like a palate cleanser after the first. But before you get to the good stuff, you have to eat your bitter AI vegetable shlock. Is Bob Dylan’s New Patreon Newsletter AI-Generated? Nobel Prize-winning singer-songwriter-poet Bob Dylan’s new Patreon features a series of audio essays and short stories that have a whiff of AI about them. Nina Corcoran on Pitchfork noted that one of the stories features “a lot of similes”—something that can be a marker of AI-written content. And the audio essays in the “Lectures From the Grave” series seem to be utilizing an AI voice. Lit Hub’s Brittany Allen notes that all the writing “is framed as ‘curated by’ Bob Dylan, as opposed to the standard ‘written.’ Which language attests that it ain’t Bob, babe.” Is …

Pete Hegseth Quotes ‘Pulp Fiction’ During Prayer Service

Pete Hegseth Quotes ‘Pulp Fiction’ During Prayer Service

Published by Sam Flores

In a move that seems indicative of the Trump administration’s increasingly fractured relationship with the Vatican, Pete Hegseth appeared to mistake lines from a classic crime film for Scripture during a public appearance this week. The defense secretary delivered a prayer during a livestreamed worship service at the Pentagon on Wednesday. “They call it CSAR 25:17, which I think is meant to reflect Ezekiel 25:17,” he said in his introduction of the prayer he’d been given. However, viewers quickly noticed his words more closely echoed one of Samuel L. Jackson’s monologues from 1994’s “Pulp Fiction” than the biblical verse he’d referenced. “The path of the downed aviator is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men,” Hegseth said in part. “Blessed is he who, in the name of camaraderie and duty, shepherds the lost through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who …

Hegseth recites ‘Pulp Fiction’ speech at Pentagon prayer service

Hegseth recites ‘Pulp Fiction’ speech at Pentagon prayer service

Published by Sam Flores

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, leading a Pentagon prayer meeting, quoted a fictional Bible verse taken from a violent monologue in Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 film “Pulp Fiction,” originally delivered by actor Samuel L. Jackson just before his character shoots a helpless man to death. The secretary used the prayer to frame the war in Iran as an act of divine justice, the same justification Jackson’s character cites in the film before pulling the trigger. Hegseth told the audience at a monthly Pentagon worship service Wednesday that he learned the prayer from the lead mission planner of the “Sandy 1” team that recently rescued downed Air Force crew members in Iran. Hegseth said the verse frequently is spoken by combat search-and-rescue crews, who call the prayer “CSAR 25:17, which I think is meant to reflect Ezekiel 25:17” from the Bible. “And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to capture and destroy my brother,” Hegseth recited. “And you will know my call sign is Sandy 1, when I lay …

Hegseth shares air rescue group’s ‘Pulp Fiction’ prayer at Pentagon service

Hegseth shares air rescue group’s ‘Pulp Fiction’ prayer at Pentagon service

Published by Sam Flores

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday repeated an air rescue group’s prayer that borrows from a scene in Quentin Tarantino’s film “Pulp Fiction.” During a Pentagon service, Hegseth said the prayer — called CSAR 25:17, an apparent reference to Ezekiel 25:17 in the Bible — was recited during a mission to recover the pilot of… Source link

The Online Fiction Boom Reimagining China’s History

The Online Fiction Boom Reimagining China’s History

Published by skeptic

If you could travel back in time, what year would you choose? What would you change about history? For a surprising number of Chinese people, their answer turns out to be the same: Use what they know today to save China from its unglorious past. In a new book titled Make China Great Again: Online Alt-History Fiction and Popular Authoritarianism, Rongbin Han, a Chinese politics professor at the University of Georgia, examines a popular science fiction genre where people travel back in time to rewrite Chinese history. Han looked at the 2,100 most popular titles on a top web novel review platform and found 238 such stories where the main characters bring technological knowledge, advanced political theories, and economic reform ideas back to ancient China or more recent historical eras. Who says 10th-century China is unequipped for a parliamentary political system? Someone’s gotta try to see how it would have worked. Han says he has personally read over 70 of these alt-history fiction books, plus dozens of other web novels with other themes for comparison. …

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke review – the downfall of an all‑American tradwife | Fiction

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke review – the downfall of an all‑American tradwife | Fiction

Published by Sam Flores

Could Caro Claire Burke’s Yesteryear be the first great tradwife novel? This was my hope: finally, a literary response to the unhinged social trend of women cosplaying “traditional Christian values” – pronatalism and obeying one’s husband – to large social media followings. I am not immune to hype, and Yesteryear has been hyped to high heaven, prompting massive auctions for the rights, and landing a film deal with Anne Hathaway. You have to admit that the premise – Instagram tradwife wakes up in what appear to be the actual pioneer days, and finds that traditional wifedom is not as much of a hoot as her whitewashed social media re-enactment had implied – is genius. As one of the “Angry Women” our heroine Natalie so disparages, I was looking forward to some sweet schadenfreude. Natalie is a “good Christian woman” with a rageful core, or, as she describes herself, “the manic pixie American dream girl of this nation’s deepest, darkest fantasies”. She knows exactly what she’s doing, because “America hates women. What a comfort to remember.” Her biting and occasionally …

Older Women Leading Historical Fiction

Older Women Leading Historical Fiction

Published by Jenni Sidey

We Ride Upon Sticks by Quan Barry The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes Burn Down Masters House by Clay Cane Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark Next Year in Havana by Chanel Cleeton The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates I Shall Never Fall In Love by Hari Conner Fruit of the Drunken Tree by Ingrid Rojas Contreras Disoriental by Négar Djavadi, translated by Tina Kover Trust by Hernán Díaz A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly The Paris Express by Emma Donoghue A Tip for the Hangman by Allison Epstein The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber The Conductors by Nicole Glover I, Medusa by Ayana Gray Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen The World That We Knew by Alice Hoffman The Salt Roads by Nalo Hopkinson The Red Palace by June Hur Ophie’s Ghosts by Justina Ireland The House of Eve by Sadeqa Johnson The Parker Inheritance by Varian Johnson Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner Deacon King Kong by …

Communion by Jon Doyle review – a charged debut about sin and solace | Fiction

Communion by Jon Doyle review – a charged debut about sin and solace | Fiction

Published by Sam Flores

Jon Doyle’s debut novel tells the story of Mack O’Brien, a young man who went to a seminary to study for the priesthood but was asked to leave because he had no real calling, and has therefore returned to his family home in Wales to work out what to do with his life. Cheek by jowl with his ailing, deeply religious mother, and a father struggling to process the grief of his own parents’ recent deaths, he finds himself drawn into participating in a local theatre production – playing a disciple in Owen Sheers’s now-legendary Passion of Port Talbot, an immersive community-led re-enactment of the crucifixion that took place over several days in Port Talbot in 2012, starring Michael Sheen. Mack is recruited after a steelworker from the plant where he works as a security guard drops out of the show. Material enough for a novel already, one might think, but all this becomes more or less background noise when, on the same night he agrees to be in the play, Mack bumps into Siwan, a young woman he was close to at school. Siwan’s mother was an environmental …