A record year for submissions sees independent publishers take their place alongside established literary houses, as the shortlist for Britain’s oldest book awards is announced today, 18 March 2026.

Showcasing the vibrancy of contemporary publishing, the James Tait Black Prizes are awarded annually to the best work of fiction and biography, judged by University of Edinburgh scholars and literature students.

This year’s nominations feature ten works from international writers that take creative risks and push the boundaries of form, style and subject matter.

This year’s shortlists were selected from the highest number of submissions ever recorded, with 300 titles considered in the fiction category and 200 for the biography prize. The winners will be announced in May.

In the fiction category, Claire-Louise Bennett’s Big Kiss, Bye Bye (Fitzcarraldo Editions) follows a narrator retreating into rural isolation after the end of a fraught relationship, in an extended meditation on attachment, sex and identity.

In Jackie Ess’s Darryl (Divided Publishing), a voyeuristic protagonist fetishises his wife’s extramarital encounters until obsession and insecurity unravel his once ‘open’ outlook. This provocative and hilarious debut novel offers deep insights into contemporary gender and sexual politics.

An East London housing office is the setting of Shady Lewis’s On the Greenwich Line (Peirene Press), translated by Katharine Halls. The darkly comic novel examines the moral lives of social workers and cruelties in the UK’s asylum system.

Vivek Shanbhag’s Sakina’s Kiss, translated by Srinath Perur (Faber & Faber), follows a middle-class Bengali family unwittingly drawn into the criminal underbelly of modern India, in a taut, precise novella.

Nell Stevens’s The Original (Scribner) tells the story of Grace Inderwick, a 19th century woman with a unique ability for forging famous paintings, in a playfully thrilling take on the Victorian page-turner.

The Biography shortlist features Marlene Daut’s The First and Last King of Haiti (Yale University Press), which charts the complex life of Henry Christophe, from his birth into slavery to his rise and fall as a revolutionary and the only monarch of Haiti.

Jenny Erpenbeck’s Things that Disappear: Reflections and Memories, translated by Kurt Beals (Granta), presents a series of short meditations that question the nature of absence, memory and identity.

Fiona Mackenzie’s The Cadence of a Song: The Life of Margaret Fay Shaw (Birlinn) traces the life of the American folklorist, whose recordings and writings helped preserve Gaelic culture in the Hebrides.

Nicholas Blincoe’s Oliver Twist & Me: The True Story of My Family and Charles Dickens’s Best-Loved Novel (Bridge Street Press) blends social and family history to explore if his ancestor’s workhouse memoir helped inspire Dickens’ novel.

Peter Stothard’s Horace: Poet on a Volcano (Yale University Press) recalls the life of the revered poet who navigated the violent power struggles of ancient Rome to secure patronage and success.

The James Tait Black Prizes were founded in 1919 by Janet Tait Black in memory of her husband, a  forward-looking decision at a time when recognition of contemporary literature was highly unusual.

This year, more than half of the shortlisted works come from independent publishers, such as Peirene Press and Fitzcarraldo Editions, highlighting the vital contribution they make to the UK’s literary landscape alongside established industry names.

Past prize-winners include many greats of modern and contemporary literature: Nadine Gordimer, Cormac McCarthy, Muriel Spark, Zadie Smith, Peter Ackroyd and Hermione Lee.

In recent years, the Prizes have recognised adventurous and experimental writing from emerging writers. Fiction winners include Alexis Wright, Shola von Reinholdt, Lucy Ellman and Eimear McBride, and in Biography, Iman Mersal, translated by Robin Moger, Amit Chaudhuri and Doireann Ní Ghríofa.

Lead Judge for Fiction, Dr Hannah Boast of the University of Edinburgh, said: “The James Tait Black Prize for Fiction is an independent prize with no commercial or market pressures – our only concern is for great literature – so we’re truly free to go beyond the mainstream. I’m thrilled to present a fiction shortlist that shows the endless capacity of contemporary writing to provoke, challenge, and surprise its readers.”

Lead Judges for Biography, Dr Désha Osborne and Dr Kate Ash-Irisarri of the University of Edinburgh, said: “The biography shortlist reflects the vitality, range and imaginative power of contemporary life-writing. From ancient poets and eighteenth-century revolutionaries to Hebridean folklore and observations on vanishing worlds, each shows how biography can illuminate both the pasts that we inherit and the fragile stories that slip away.”