Six writers are now finalists for the prestigious annual prize, which awards £20,000 to a writer aged 39 or under
Derek Owusu and Seán Hewitt are among the writers shortlisted for this year’s Swansea University Dylan Thomas prize.
Harriet Armstrong, Colwill Brown, Sasha Debevec-McKenney and Suzannah V Evans also made the shortlist for the £20,000 award, which celebrates fiction in any form – including novels, short stories, poetry and drama – by writers aged 39 or under, in honour of the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, who died at that age.
Comprising four novels and two poetry collections, the books on the “galvanising” shortlist “have profound things to say about the ways we live and what it means to be human”, said author and judging panel chair, Irenosen Okojie.
Two of the six shortlisted authors have previously been nominated for the award. British-Irish poet and memoirist Hewitt, nominated in 2025 for his poetry collection, Rapture’s Road, has been chosen again for his debut novel, Open, Heaven – a portrait of gay first love, described in the Guardian by Sarah Perry as a “tender, skilled and epiphanic work”.
