The Climate Fiction Prize announces 2024 All-female Shortlist

The shortlist reflect strong themes of resilience, motherhood, intersectionality and the emergence of ‘eerie’

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 shortlist today.

The genre and global-spanning shortlist reflects strong themes of resilience, motherhood, intersectionality and the emergence of ‘eerie’.

Five novels have been chosen by an expert panel of judges from across the literary and climate worlds, as the Prize’s first shortlist, from the all-female longlist announced in November. Shortlisted titles include consideration of climate justice, resilience, whole-world approaches and community, lightness and humour, diversity, intersectionality, and, essentially, literary merit and enjoyment.

The Climate Fiction Prize 2024 Shortlist, 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

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

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

Emerging findings from the shortlist:

● Climate Fiction is not a single genre, it is a theme that is emerging across all genres, and soon most fiction will touch on it as it is increasingly the reality of our changing world

● Mothers and daughters, raising children, sibling relationships and growing up in a changing climate

● The emergence of otherworldly; eerie, myths, reflecting the sense of the uncanny as the seasons and weather rapidly shifts away from predictable cycles

● Resilience and community in the face of disaster and difficulty

● The emotional, interior world and the growing sense of anxiety and our relational response

● Colonisation and the intersection of class and social inequality, racism and climate

● Journey stories that explore the transition away from the polluting, extractive ways of being to the joys of new ways of living within the world

The 2024 prizes judges are writer Madeleine Bunting (Chair); climate justice activist and writer Tori Tsui, non-fiction author Nicola Chester (On Gallows Down, shortlisted for the James Cropper Wainwright Prize) and Andy Fryers, Hay Festival’s Sustainability Director.

Climate Fiction Prize Judge, Nicola Chester said:

'Remaining true to the global scope, quality, strength and reach of the longlist, the chosen books prove the diversity of genres sought by the Prize. Together, they promote and celebrate the power and joy of storytelling, to show us how we might see ourselves anew in the light of the climate crisis, and how we might respond to and rise to its challenges with hope and inventiveness.'

Climate Spring Founder & Executive Director, Lucy Stone said:

'The inaugural Climate Fiction Prize shortlist is a testament to the power of fiction in shaping how we see and respond to the climate crisis. At Climate Spring, we know that stories have the ability to engage audiences in ways that facts alone cannot - offering new perspectives, sparking imagination and making complex issues resonate on a personal level. The sheer breadth of narratives represented here, spanning genres and geographies, shows that climate storytelling is not a niche but an exciting and evolving space within literature. We’re proud to support the Climate Fiction Prize in amplifying and celebrating stories that challenge, inspire and stay with us long after the last page.'

The Prize, supported by Climate Spring, is worth £10,000. The announcement will take place at an awards ceremony in London on Wednesday 14th May, 2025.

A winner’s Q&A event will take place at Hay Festival on Friday 30th May 2025 at 5.30pm.