Climate Fiction Prize Longlist announcement

the all-women list includes 3 contemporary and 6 dystopian novels

The Climate Fiction Prize, a new literary prize which rewards the best novel-length work of fiction published in the UK engaging with the climate crisis, announces its inaugural longlist today.

The genre-spanning longlist comprises nine novels set around the globe and beyond. Nine novels have been chosen by an expert panel of judges from across the literary and climate worlds, as the Prize’s first longlist. The list demonstrates the exciting breadth and diversity of genres represented within the climate fiction space, from literary and historical fiction to science fiction and pacey, plot-driven narratives.

The Climate Fiction Prize 2024 longlist, divided by genre:

CONTEMPORARY

And So I Roar by Abi Daré - sisterhood and female empowerment in current day Nigeria

Orbital by Samantha Harvey - winner of the Booker Prize. Six astronauts rotate in their spacecraft above the earth, watching their silent blue planet

Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright - In a small Aboriginal town dominated by a haze cloud, which heralds both ecological disaster and a gathering of the ancestors, Cause Man Steel is chasing a mad vision: a national donkey transport scheme that will guarantee his people’s independence forever

SPECULATIVE FUTURE FICTION

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley - A time travel romance and a spy thriller about an arctic explorer brought to the future

Private Rites by Julia Armfield - a speculative reimagining of King Lear, centering three sisters navigating queer love and loss in a drowning world

Briefly Very Beautiful by Roz Dineen - a mother takes her three children to a mysterious commune to escape dystopian flooding

The Morningside by Téa Obreht - a penthouse apartment building in a flooded dystopian city

Water Baby by Chioma Okereke - in a floating slum off mainland Lagos, Nigeria, nineteen-year-old Baby jumps at the chance to join a newly launched drone-mapping project, aimed at broadening the visibility of her community, until a video of her at work goes viral

The Mars House by Natasha Pulley - a queer sci-fi novel about an Earth refugee and a Mars politician who fake marry to save their reputations—and their planet

The list is global in scope, reflecting the scale of the crisis, with settings ranging from Australia’s Northern Territories, a London of the near-future, rural and urban Nigeria and even Mars. Also notable is the list’s all-female authorship, including two debut novelists, Roz Dineen and Kaliane Bradley, Booker Prize winner Samantha Harvey, and multi-award winning Indigenous Australian author, Alexis Wright.

Chair of Judges, Madeleine Bunting said: ‘My fellow judges and I are truly delighted with this first ever longlist for the Climate Fiction Prize. With the climate crisis ever more urgent, this globe-spanning list offers a unique collection of narratives, styles and genres, exploring the preeminent struggle of our time. We are as proud as we are hopeful that anyone and everyone might find amongst these nine titles a book that stays with them long after the reading.’

Director of the Climate Fiction Prize, Rose Goddard said: ‘I’m so inspired by this wonderful longlist, the first of its kind and an indication of the stellar array of novels being written in the climate fiction space. WIth the new Climate Fiction Prize, our aim is to reach hearts and minds on the topic of the climate crisis and show that stories, and the novel form in particular, can engage and captivate us like nothing else can. These nine books do just that and I’d like to thank our incredible judges for this vital, timely selection.’

Find out more at ClimateFictionPrize.com

The Prize’s founders are Leo Barasi (climate communications expert and author, The Climate Majority), Rose Goddard (former Executive Director at Wimbledon BookFest and former Prize Manager of the Women’s Prize for Fiction) and Imran Khan (former Head of Public Engagement at the Wellcome Trust, now at UC Berkeley).

The Prize’s advisory group includes Dr Friederike Otto (Imperial College London and World Weather Attribution), Alex Evans (Larger Us), Jessica Woollard (David Higham), Wren James (Climate Fiction Writers’ League) and Lucy Stone (Climate Spring).

The Prize is supported by global climate storytelling organisation Climate Spring. Climate Spring works with creatives, producers and commissioners around the world to support the development of new narratives for the climate crisis. climate-spring.org

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West Midlands event

On 28th November, Wren James is giving a talk at Warwick University panel ‘Beyond Doom and Denial: Crafting Climate Narratives of Hope’ from 6pm – 8:30 pm with Dr Hita Unnikrishnan and Dr. Nicholas Lawrence as part of their day ‘Unsettling the Anthropos: Reworlding Climate Knowledge for Epistemic Plurality’