The board of the Dylan Thomas Prize announced the longlist of nominees for the 2013 award. A total of 12 writers made the list.

The DTP is awarded to a talented writer in the English language under age 30. The award is intended to encourage “raw creative talent.” The winner will receive an award of 30,000 pounds (equivalent to U.S. $46,527).

The nominees:

• Emma Chapman — How To Be A Good Wife (Picador)
• Tim Leach — The Last King Of Lydia (Atlantic)
• Prajwal Parajuly — The Gurkha’s Daughter (Quercus)
• Marli Roode — Call It Dog (Atlantic)
• Julie Sarkissian — Dear Lucy (Hodder & Stoughton)
• Majok Tulba — Beneath The Darkening Sky (Oneworld)
• Claire Vaye Watkins — Battleborn (Granta)
• D.W. Wilson — Ballistics (Hamish Hamilton)
• James Brookes Sins Of The Leopard (Salt) poetry
• Jemma L. King The Shape Of A Forest (Parthian) poetry
• David Shook Our Obsidian Tongues (Eyewear) poetry
• Polly Stenham No Quarter (Faber) drama

Commenting on this year’s longlist, Chair of the Prize, Peter Stead, said: “This year’s longlist is an eclectic list of considerable variety, taking us from war torn Sudan to the
2003 firestorms raging through British Columbia, with stops along the way in rioting Johannesburg, the scorched landscape of Nevada and Hindu festivals in Darjeeling among other places.“Every year of the Prize is different from the previous one but this year, the sheer volume of new talent we’ve discovered leaves me with a feeling that we are going to have an exceptional year. These are books that readers will definitely want to get their hands on.”

I have just started reading Claire Vaye Watkins’ BATTLEBORN and will post a review in the next week or two. I also hope to arrange an interview with her before the school year begins at Bucknell University, where she teaches.

Here is a little background on Watkins from her website.

“Her collection of short stories, Battleborn (Riverhead Books), won the Story Prize, the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Silver Pen Award from the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame. A finalist for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, and longlisted for the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, Battleborn was named a best book of 2012 by the San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, Time Out New York, Flavorwire, and NPR.org. In 2012, Claire was selected as one of the National Book Foundation’s ‘5 Under 35.'”