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Sunday 21 December 2014

All-female shortlist for Costa Prize

The Costa prize will be awarded to a woman this year after an all-female shortlist was announced for the first time in its history.

All-female shortlist for Costa Prize
The second instalment of Hilary Mantel's Tudor trilogy is the favourite for the award Photo: ANDREW CROWLEY

It marks a year dominated by female authors, who have swept prizes including the Booker, and topped many bestseller lists.

The Costa has five separate categories – for best novel, biography, debut novel, children’s book and work of poetry – with the overall winner being chosen from the victors in each domain.

Hilary Mantel has been awarded the 2012 Costa Novel Award for Bring up the Bodies, which scooped the Booker prize in October.

In so doing she became the first woman to win the award twice, prompting her to comment: “You wait 20 years for a Booker prize and then two come along at once.”

The second part in her Tudor trilogy re-telling the life of Thomas Cromwell, it is unsurprisingly the favourite for the Costa. The first in the series, Wolf Hall, won the Booker in 2009.

The Costa shortlist also contains a graphic book for the first time, Dotter of her Father’s Eyes, written by Mary Talbot but illustrated by her husband Bryan. It has won in the biography category.

It tells in picture form the story of James Joyce’s relationship with his daughter Lucia, and also of the bond between Mary Talbot and her father, a scholar of the famous Irishman.

Francesca Segal, a journalist and critic, has won the debut novel award for her book The Innocents, set in a north London Jewish community and modelled on The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton’s tale of betrayal in high society New York which won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize.

Sally Gardner, a writer and illustrator who was once labelled ‘unteachable’ on account of her dyslexia, has triumphed in the children’s category for her tale Maggot Moon.

Kathleen Jamie won the poetry section for The Overhaul, which the judges said would convert readers to the genre.

The all-female shortlist means women will have claimed both of the ‘big name’ book prizes of 2012.

At the start of October Jorie Graham also won the £10,000 Forward prize for poetry, for her work P L A C E.

Casting back to last January, they accounted for three of the five category winners for the 2011 Costas.

However, men still claimed the 2012 TS Eliot prize – another highly esteemed poetry award – as well as the Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction.

Wendy Holden, one of the Costa judges, described the shortlist as “a great result”.

She added: “As well as recognising some truly great work it is a warning to men to pull their socks up, stop being so complacent and write some decent books."

Mantel’s Bring up the Bodies is the clear favourite, with William Hill giving odds of 5/4.

The Innocents is at 3/1, Dotter of her Father’s Eyes 4/1, The Overheal 5/1 and Maggot Moon 7/1.

Amanda Craig, whose novel Hearts and Minds was long-listed for the Orange Prize, said: “It’s about time there was an all-female Costa shortlist. It’s surprising it hasn’t happened before, given how many really terrific women writers there are.”

She hoped Gardner’s Maggot Moon, about a dyslexic girl fighting to avoid being exterminated in a dystopian 1950s Britain, would win.

“There’s a strong argument that a really good children’s book like this will outlast the very best in adult fiction,” she said.

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