Endling by Maria Reva won the £10,000 (about $13,415) Gordon Burn Prize, which honors "exceptional writing which has an unconventional perspective, style or subject matter and often defies easy categorization."
Chair of judges Val McDermid said: "We've had an astonishing range of books--fiction and non-fiction--and I've encountered writers whose work I hadn't previously discovered, as well as those who have previously given me great pleasure. My fellow judges have made the process itself part of the pleasure, sharing their honest critical views and their enthusiasm. And in the end, our winner is one that I believe Gordon himself would have enjoyed."
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The longlist has been selected for the 2026 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, "the largest English-language literary prize for women and non-binary writers in the world." The winner receives $150,000 and the four finalists receive $12,500 each. The shortlist will be announced April 21 and the winner June 2.
The longlist:
The Edge of Water by Olufunke Grace Bankole (Tin House)
Sea, Poison by Caren Beilin (New Directions)
milktooth by Jaime Burnet (Vagrant Press)
Suddenly Light by Nina Dunic (Invisible Publishing)
Canticle by Janet Rich Edwards (Spiegel & Grau)
Hellions by Julia Elliott (Tin House)
Casualties of Truth by Lauren Francis-Sharma (Atlantic Monthly Press)
The White Hot by Quiara Alegría Hudes (One World)
Audition by Katie Kitamura (Riverhead Books)
Cannon by Lee Lai (Drawn & Quarterly)
Wild Life by Amanda Leduc (Random House Canada)
A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar (McClelland & Stewart, Canada; Knopf, U.S.)
The Morgue Keeper by Ruyan Meng (7.13 Books)
The Sea Gives Up the Dead by Molly Olguín (Red Hen Press)
Lion by Sonya Walger (New York Review Books)