2026 Goldsmiths Prize speculation > Likes and Comments
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Some contenders...RABBITBOX by Wayne Holloway-Smith
Wimmy Road Boyz by Sufiyaan Salam
As If by Isabel Waidner
Dooneen by Keith Ridgway
Glyph by Ali Smith
About to Fall Apart by Ashley Hickson-Lovence
Your Life Without Me by James Meek
Maryville by Joelle Taylor
The End of Everything by M John Harrison
One Aladdin Two Lamps by Jeanette Winterson
The Silver Book by Olivia Laing
Borderline Fiction by Derek Owusu, or indeed The Recovery House
Keshed by Stu Hennigan (a Queen Mary Small Press Fiction Prize judge)
Attention-Seeking Behavior: A Novel by Aea Varfis-van Warmelo
Our Better Natures by Sophie Ward
Jaw Filler by Maz Murray and Charlie Markbreiter
My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein by Deborah Levy
Black Bag by Luke Kennard
The Quantity Theory of Morality by Will Self
Boyhood by David Keenan
Paradise by Ben Tufnell
Seven by Joanna Kavenna
What Am I, a Deer? by Polly Barton
May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry
Foulness by David Henningham from Henningham Family Press (which is apparently finally to be published - I read a version 4 years ago)
(The Wreck by Lizzy Stewart is I think ineligible due to the author's post at the uni)
What a team of judges! I can only hope the submissions are equal.
Just started Malcs Boy which must be a contender and early on there is this quote from Malc on the meta/auto fictional book his son is proposing (and we are reading)“'Not everyan's a bloody brainbox, man. A's tellen ye noo, folk in Wigton won't buy a book like that. Folk wanna good story. Plenny uh action.'”
I think that should be the prude’s new criteria - “books folk in Winton won’t buy. “
Wimmy Road Boyz has to be in the shortlist
Feels a very strong year this yearWimmy Road Boyz
As If
Rabbitbox
Maryville
Borderline Fiction/The Recovery House
Life of M
The End of Everything
Said the Dead
Attention-Seeking Behaviour
Gloria Don't Speak
Telegraphy
What Am I, a Deer?
Keshed/Malc's Boy
Your Life Without Me
My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein
Dooneen
About to Fall Apart
Our Better Natures
is three shortlists worth of shortlist worthy books (and I'm sure lots of ones I've missed).
The judges may be sensible to make an explicit - but rather prize-contrary - call not to shortlist any authors previously featured (or even just exclude previous winners) as that would whittle down a fair few of these.
I can confirm that the shortlist will be announced on 30th September.
Just put up a link to a Youtube review with some wild suggestions some of you might like (Paul). Dates not good for Goldsmith but didn't know where to put it!📚
peg wrote: "Just put up a link to a Youtube review with some wild suggestions some of you might like (Paul). Dates not good for Goldsmith but didn't know where to put it!📚"Thanks!!
In a departure from the norm followed by the annual lecturehttps://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/wha...
I will miss both unfortunately as working in NY - a little like David Hastings business travel commitments will mean I neglect from my (literary) family
Her contention on AI feels a little odd to me - if the novel is a record of lived experience that a) seems to rule out several Goldsmiths books as novels and indeed various books generally where authors imagine others experience b) AI can read accounts of lived experience. But I suspect the lecture will be more subtle and convincing than the headline.
Incidentally as Trustee of a prize, we are wrestling with whether and how we limit the use of AI by authors who enter.
Any thoughts as to what might appear on the Goldsmiths?I'm posting a series of Instagram posts with GY in the next few days to see if any predictions come from there
My own list of the "genuinely novel" excludes former shortlistees and Booker books - of which there are many strong contenders in both cases - and is:
Wimmy Road Boyz
RABBITBOX
The Recovery House
Said the Dead
Keshed
Pink Soap
The judges were announced this week:
The panel will be chaired by Professor of Creative Writing Francis Spufford, author of four novels. ‘Golden Hill’ won the Costa First Novel Award, ‘Light Perpetual’ was longlisted for the Booker, and ‘Cahokia Jazz’ won the Sidewise Award for alternative history. His latest novel ‘Nonesuch’ - a historical fantasy set during the Blitz - is due to be released in February.
Professor Spufford is joined by writers Kate Briggs, Hari Kunzru and David Sexton on the panel.
Kate Briggs, a translator and writer who co-runs Short Pieces That Move! micro-press, was awarded the 2021 Windham Campbell Prize for non-fiction. She is the author of ‘This Little Art’ about literary translation and her first novel ‘The Long Form’ was shortlisted for the 2023 Goldsmiths Prize.
Hari Kunzru is the author of seven novels, including ‘Gods Without Men’, ‘White Tears’, ‘Red Pill’ and ‘Blue Ruin’, and a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books, Harper’s and the New York Times. He teaches at New York University.
Literary Editor of the London Evening Standard between 1997-2020 and a judge for the Booker Prize in 2005, David Sexton currently reviews films for the New Statesman.