“I’ve learned an enormous amount as a reader - to be much more open in what I read,” she added.

For me, it took me to places that I wouldn’t necessarily have gone before.” The list is eclectic and there are so many different types of stories and types of voices. Minchin said: “The diversity of thought and creativity of women writers at the moment is vast and exciting and inspiring. The prize, worth £30,000, is awarded for the best full-length novel of the year written by a woman and published in the UK. Minchin, who is a broadcaster and writer, said the books on the list were “ambitious and hard-hitting and imaginative, and they take you on an emotional journey that I feel moved by and inspired by”. The list is completed by Pod by Laline Paull, who was previously shortlisted for the prize in 2015 for her novel The Bees. They are joined by Barbara Kingsolver, who won the prize in 2010 for The Lacuna and is shortlisted this year for Demon Copperhead, and Maggie O’Farrell, who is shortlisted for The Marriage Portrait and who won the prize in 2020 for Hamnet. Tender and shocking, Trespasses is an unforgettable debut of people trying to live ordinary lives in extraordinary times.The first-time novelists shortlisted for the prize are Jacqueline Crooks for Fire Rush, Louise Kennedy for Trespasses and Priscilla Morris for Black Butterflies. And as she is forced to tread lines she never thought she would cross, tensions in the town are escalating, threatening to destroy all she is working to hold together. In the class Cushla teaches, the vocabulary of seven-year-old children now includes phrases like 'petrol bomb' and 'rubber bullets'. But here, love is never far from violence, and this encounter will change both of their lives forever.Īs people get up each morning and go to work, school, church or the pub, the daily news rolls in of another car bomb exploded, another man beaten, killed or left for dead. There is nothing special about the day Cushla meets Michael, a married man from Belfast, in the pub owned by her family. If Michael Agnew had not walked through the door of the pub on a quiet night in February in his white shirt. If Seamie McGeown had not found himself alone on a dark street. Trespasses, Louise Kennedy ( paperback March 2023) £8.99 One by one, she undid each event, each decision, each choice.

Trespasses kennedy