Three 1st-time novelists make it to the Orange Prize shortlist

Tue, 04/12/2011 - 8:48am by sernabad

Half of this year's Orange Prize for fiction shortlist candidates are debut novelists.

The Orange Prize, established in 1996 to celebrate women fiction writers around the world, is based in England.

Tea Obreht, author of The Tiger's Wife, continues her meteoric rise by making the cut. In her story, a woman medic working in a war torn orphanage, searches for the answers to her doctor-grandfather's death.

Kathleen Winter, another first-time novelist, was chosen for Annabel, a disturbing coming-of-age novel about a Canadian hermaphrodite.

Emma Henderson was tapped for her first novel, Grace Williams Says It Loud, whose eponymous character enters a state psychiatric hospital at age 11 when her parents cannot cope with her multiple severe disabilities.

The Orange Prize for Fiction, which comes with a purse of £30,000, will be announced June 8th in London.