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The longlist is announced for the Gordon Burn Prize 2017

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The longlist is today announced for the Gordon Burn Prize 2017, which was established in 2012 to celebrate the legacy one of literature’s great innovators.

Gordon’s writing was precise and rigorous, and often blurred the line between fact and fiction. He wrote across a wide range of subjects, from celebrities to serial killers, politics to contemporary art; his works include the novels Fullalove and Born Yesterday: The News as a Novel, and non-fiction including Happy Like Murderers: The Story of Fred and Rosemary West, Best and Edwards: Football, Fame and Oblivion and Sex & Violence, Death & Silence: Encounters with Recent Art.

The Gordon Burn Prize, run in partnership by the Gordon Burn Trust, New Writing North, Faber & Faber and Durham Book Festival, seeks to celebrate the work of those who follow in his footsteps: novels which dare to enter history and interrogate the past; non-fiction adventurous enough to inhabit characters and events to create a new and vivid realities. The prize is open to works in English by writers of any nationality or descent who, at the time of entering, are permanently resident in the United Kingdom or the United States of America.

The longlist for the Gordon Burn Prize 2017 is:

  • Autumn by Ali Smith (Hamish Hamilton)
  • Between Them by Richard Ford (Bloomsbury)
  • Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile by Adelle Stripe (Wrecking Ball Press)
  • Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe by Kapka Kassabova (Granta Books)
  • Estuary: Out from London to the Sea by Rachel Lichtenstein (Hamish Hamilton)
  • First Love by Gwendoline Riley (Granta Books)
  • I Hate the Internet: A Novel by Jarrett Kobek (Serpent’s Tail)
  • Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders (Bloomsbury)
  • The Long Drop by Denise Mina (Harvill Secker)
  • The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich (Macmillan)
  • The Secret Life: Three True Stories by Andrew O’Hagan (Faber & Faber)
  • This Is the Place to Be by Lara Pawson (CB Editions)
  • This is Memorial Device by David Keenan (Faber & Faber)
  • You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine by Alexandra Kleeman (4th Estate)

Carol Gorner, on behalf of the Gordon Burn Trust, said: “The longlist for the 2017 Gordon Burn Prize was difficult to reach, as there was such a wide range of books of a very high standard to choose from. In the end, we arrived at a longer list than usual; it will be very exciting to follow the process to achieve the shortlist. It is particularly encouraging that there is such a strong showing of women writers this year.”

Claire Malcolm, chief executive of New Writing North, said: “The longlist for the Gordon Burn Prize represents some of the most interesting contemporary writing coming out of the UK and the US. The prize always attracts a wide-ranging selection of titles – from true crime to boundary-breaking fiction – and it is exciting to see the list come together as one. If you love to read ambitious writing that makes you consider the world with fresh eyes, these are the books you will want to read in 2017.”

The shortlist will be announced in July and the prize itself will be awarded at the Durham Book Festival on Thursday 12th October.