Big Girl Small Town longlisted for the RSL Ondaatje prize

The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) released the longlist for the 2021 RSL Ondaatje Prize which is awarded to an outstanding work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry that best evokes the spirit of a place.

The Ondaatje Prize aims to create “lists of outstanding works and authors that you would not usually find sitting side by side.” Thirteen authors were chosen by judges Lola, Baroness Young of Hornsey (chair), Helen Mort and Adam Rutherford. I’m thrilled to see Big Girl Small Town in the following company:

  • James Boyce Imperial Mud (Icon Books)

  • Michael Crawley Out of Thin Air (Bloomsbury Sport)

  • Catherine Fletcher The Beauty and the Terror (Bodily Head)

  • Michelle Gallen Big Girl, Small Town (John Murray Publishers)

  • Ruth Gilligan The Butchers (Atlantic Books)

  • Louise Hare This Lovely City (HQ)

  • Adam Mars-Jones Box Hill (Fitzcarraldo Editions)

  • Caroline O’Donoghue Scenes of a Graphic Nature (Virago)

  • Nina Powles Magnolia, 木蘭 (Nine Arches Press)

  • James Rebanks English Pastoral (Allen Lane)

  • Gareth E. Rees Unofficial Britain (Elliot & Thompson)

  • Monique Roffey The Mermaid of Black Conch (Peepal Tree Press)

  • Francesca Wade Square Haunting (Faber & Faber)

Previous recipients of the Prize have included Roger Robinson, Aida Edemariam, Pascale Petit, Francis Spufford, Alan Johnson, Edmund de Waal, Hisham Matar and Louisa Waugh.

Michelle Gallen