Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction

The winner of the Women’s prize for Fiction, sponsored for the first time by Baileys, will be announced on June 4th. Previously known as The Orange Prize for Fiction, the award worth £30,000 is open to any woman writing in English - whatever her nationality or country of residence.

Three of the authors on the 2014 shortlist are debut writers. They are Irish authors Eimear McBride for A Girl Is A Half-formed Thing, Audrey Magee for The Undertaking and Australian author Hannah Kent for Burial Rites. They are competing with one previous Orange Prize winner, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, one previously shortlisted author Doona Tartt and Jhumpa Lahiri whose book The Lowland was shortlisted for last year's Man Booker Prize.

Jon Howells, of Waterstones, praised what he called "a fabulous shortlist", which had "great scope of style, nationality; small publishers and giants; debut authors and established ones. The judges have hit a perfect balance, six novels of inarguable quality." He tipped one of the debut books to win.

The shortlisted books are:

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Americanah
Hannah Kent - Burial Rites
Jhumpa Lahiri - The Lowland
Audrey Magee - The Undertaking
Eimear McBride - A Girl Is A Half-formed Thing
Donna Tartt - The Goldfinch