Seven debut novels, four by women, have made the short list for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize.

Angela Flournoy’s The Turner House (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), Tanwi Nandini Islam’s Bright Lines (Penguin Press), Sophie McManus’s The Unfortunates (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), and Lori Ostlund’s After the Parade (Scribner) made the cut from a long list of 29 novels.

The other finalists are Against the Country by Ben Metcalf (Random House), The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma (Little, Brown), and The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Grove Press).

The longlist included such acclaimed novels as Black River by S.M. Hulse (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), Girl at War by Sara Nović (Random House) [see my review here], Orhan’s Inheritance by Aline Ohanesian (Algonquin Books) [see my review here], The Star Side of Bird Hill by Naomi Jackson (Penguin Press), The Sunlit Night by Rebecca Dinerstein (Bloomsbury), and You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine by Alexandra Kleeman (Harper).

The author of the winning book is awarded $10,000 and each shortlisted author receives $1,000. The winner will be announced at the Center’s Annual Benefit and Awards Dinner on December 8 at The Metropolitan Club.

Full story here: http://centerforfiction.org/awards/the-first-novel-prize/2015-first-novel-prize-short-list/