Orange Award finalists coming to New Zealand

, recently announced the 2011 shortlist.

Two of the finalists for the Orange Prize for Fiction, the UK’s only major book award for women, will be visiting New Zealand in May for the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival.

Téa Obreht and Aminatta Forna were named among the six finalists. The prize has its 16th anniversary this year and celebrates excellence, originality and accessibility in women’s writing from around the world. The shortlisted titles are:

Emma Donoghue – Room (Picador)
Aminatta Forna – The Memory of Love (Bloomsbury)
Emma Henderson – Grace Williams Says It Loud (Sceptre)
Nicole Krauss – Great House (Viking)
Téa Obreht – The Tiger's Wife (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
Kathleen Winter – Annabel (Jonathan Cape)

This year’s shortlist includes both new and well-established writers, featuring three first novels and one previously shortlisted author, Nicole Krauss (2006).

Bettany Hughes, chairwoman of the judging panel, commented: “Our judging meeting fizzed for many hours with conversations about the originality, excellence and readability of the books in front of us - credit to the calibre of submissions this year.

"The clarity and human-understanding on the page is simply breathtaking. The number of first-time novelists is an indicator of the rude health of women's writing. The verve and scope of storylines pays compliment to the female imagination.

"There are no subjects these authors don't dare to tackle. Even though the stories in our final choices range from kidnapping to colonialism, from the persistence of love to Balkan folk-memory, from hermaphroditism to abuse in care, the books are written with such a skilful lightness of touch, humour, sympathy and passion, they all make for an exhilarating and uplifting read. This shortlist should give hours of reading pleasure to the wider world.”

The Orange Prize was set up in 1996 to celebrate and promote fiction by women throughout the world to the widest range of readers possible and is awarded for the best novel of the year.

The winner will be presented with a cheque for £30,000 and a limited edition bronze statue known as the Bessie, created by artist Grizel Niven. Both are anonymously endowed.

Previous winners are Barbara Kingsolver for The Lacuna (2010), Marilynne Robinson for Home (2009), Rose Tremain for The Road Home (2008), Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for Half of a Yellow Sun (2007), Zadie Smith for On Beauty (2006), Lionel Shriver for We Need to Talk About Kevin (2005), Andrea Levy for Small Island (2004), Valerie Martin for Property (2003), Ann Patchett for Bel Canto (2002), Kate Grenville for The Idea of Perfection (2001), Linda Grant for When I Lived in Modern Times (2000), Suzanne Berne for A Crime in the Neighbourhood (1999), Carol Shields for Larry’s Party (1998), Anne Michaels for Fugitive Pieces (1997) and Helen Dunmore for A Spell of Winter (1996).

This year's judges were: Bettany Hughes (chair), broadcaster, historian and author; Liz Calder, founder-director of Bloomsbury Publishing and Full Circle Editions; Tracy Chevalier, novelist; Helen Lederer, actress and writer; and Susanna Reid, journalist and broadcaster.

The award ceremony will take place in The Clore Ballroom, Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London, on June 8, 2011.

For more information on the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival: http://www.writersfestival.co.nz/