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Writer Kate Atkinson joins an all-female shortlist for the Costa Novel Award, one of five shortlists for the Costa Book Awards announced this evening (see full lists below).
Alongside Atkinson, shortlisted for Life After Life (Doubleday), is Bernardine Bishop for Unexpected Lessons in Love (John Murray); Maggie O’Farrell for Instructions for a Heatwave (Tinder Press) and Evie Wyld for All the Birds, Singing (Jonathan Cape). Bishop's is a posthumous shortlisting, following the writer's death in July.
This year's Samuel Johnson Prize winner Lucy Hughes-Hallett's The Pike (Fourth Estate), the story of Italian artist Gabriele D’Annunzio, gets a second outing on the four-strong shortlist for the Costa Biography Award. Meanwhile writer Clive James' translation of Dante's Inferno, published by Picador, is among the books up for the Poetry Award.
The Costa Book Awards recognise the most enjoyable books published in the last year across five categories—First Novel, Novel, Biography, Poetry and Children’s Book—by UK and Ireland resident authors. The category winners, who each receive £5,000, will be announced on 6th January, and the overall winner of the £30,000 Costa Book of the Year 2013 on 28th January 2014.
The winner of the Costa Short Story Award, voted for by the public, will also be announced at the ceremony. The six stories shortlisted for that award will be revealed on the Costa Book Awards website, www.costabookawards.com, on 3rd December.
The shortlists in full:
2013 Costa Novel Award shortlist
Kate Atkinson for Life After Life (Doubleday)
Bernardine Bishop for Unexpected Lessons in Love (John Murray)
Maggie O’Farrell for Instructions for a Heatwave (Tinder Press)
Evie Wyld for All the Birds, Singing (Jonathan Cape)
2013 Costa First Novel Award shortlist
Sam Byers for Idiopathy (Fourth Estate)
Kate Clanchy for Meeting the English (Picador)
Nathan Filer for The Shock of the Fall (HarperCollinsPublishers)
Sathnam Sanghera for Marriage Material (William Heinemann)
2013 Costa Biography Award shortlist
Gavin Francis for Empire Antarctica: Ice, Silence & Emperor Penguins (Chatto & Windus)
Thomas Harding for Hanns and Rudolf: The German Jew and the Hunt for the Kommandant of Auschwitz (William Heinemann)
Lucy Hughes-Hallett for The Pike: Gabriele D’Annunzio, Poet, Seducer and Preacher of War (Fourth Estate)
Olivia Laing for The Trip to Echo Spring: Why Writers Drink (Canongate)
2013 Costa Poetry Award shortlist
Clive James for Dante, The Divine Comedy (Picador)
Helen Mort for Division Street (Chatto & Windus)
Robin Robertson for Hill of Doors (Picador)
Michael Symmons Roberts for Drysalter (Jonathan Cape)
2013 Costa Children’s Book Award shortlist
Ross Montgomery for Alex, the Dog and the Unopenable Door (Faber and Faber)
Sarah Naughton for The Hanged Man Rises (Simon and Schuster)
Chris Riddell for Goth Girl and the Ghost of a Mouse (Macmillan Children’s Books)
Elizabeth Wein for Rose Under Fire (Electric Monkey)