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Dublin-based Indian poet Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe is among the six shortlisted writers whose names the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize announced on March 31. The shortlist for the UK’s most prestigious prize of £20,000 includes Sri Lankan writer Anuk Arudpragasam for his novel A Passage North. The winner will be announced in Swansea, UK on May 12, two days before International Dylan Thomas Day.
The annual Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize was launched in 2006 and is one the world’s largest prizes for young writers. It is awarded to the best published literary work in the English language written by an author aged 39 or under. The prize is named after the Swansea-born writer Dylan Thomas.
Nominees also include American writer Patricia Lockwood with her debut novel, No One is Talking About This, which was also a finalist for the Booker Prize; American writer Nathan Harris’ The Sweetness of Water, long-listed for the Booker Prize; British-Ghanian writer Caleb Azumah Nelson’s debut novel Open Water, which won him the Costa First Novel Award 2021; and Booker-shortlisted American writer Brandon Taylor’s Filthy Animals.
Zak/Aria Eipe’s Auguries of A Minor God, published by Faber, is her debut poetry collection. According to Faber, its first half is composed of five sections, corresponding to the five arrows of Kama, the god of love, desire and memory. The second is a long narrative poem, ‘A is for العرب [Arabs]’, which follows a different kind of journey: a family of refugees who have fled to the West from conflict in an unspecified Middle Eastern country.
The shortlist was selected by a judging panel chaired by co-founder and co-director of the Jaipur Literature Festival and award-winning author Namita Gokhale. She said, ““The long-list for the 2022 Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize was one of the strongest ever. The jury has whittled this down to a shortlist that is riveting and compelling on so many levels. It presents a rich diversity of accomplished young and debut voices, and their explorations of the poetic, the historical, and the contemporary.”
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