Announcing the Discoveries Prize shortlist 2026
BY Discoveries
14th May 2026
Curtis Brown Creative are proud to partner with the Women’s Prize Trust, the Curtis Brown literary agency and Audible to run Discoveries for a sixth year. This is a unique novel-writing development prize and programme for women writers in the UK and Ireland, who have not been traditionally published in long form.
We’re delighted to share this year’s shortlist of six unpublished novels-in-progress selected from a record-breaking number of 3,216 entries, chosen for the quality and promise shown in 10,000 words and a synopsis.
These titles were selected by Chair of Judges Kate Mosse CBE, international bestselling novelist and Founder Director of the Women’s Prize, and her judging panel: acclaimed authors Dorothy Koomson and Nussaibah Younis, Curtis Brown literary agent Ciara Finan and Curtis Brown Creative’s founder Anna Davis.
Kate Mosse, Chair of Judges, said: ‘It has been so hard to select just six writers from our excellent longlist of sixteen. This year, we were blown away by the imagination, the ambition and the fresh perspectives highlighted in this wonderful range of work. As a new cohort of talented writers become part of the Discoveries family, we are also celebrating the success of authors previously longlisted and shortlisted. On behalf of my fellow judges, huge congratulations to this exceptional shortlist. We all – the Women’s Prize Trust, Curtis Brown, Curtis Brown Creative and Audible – are very proud to play a part in providing tangible support and resources to emerging writers and help their stories find the readership they deserve.'
Anna Davis, Curtis Brown Creative, and Ciara Finan, Curtis Brown, said: 'Judging Discoveries is always a real privilege. This year, we’ve loved the way our shortlisted writers have blended and subverted genre, twisting the familiar into something new and unique. They’ve explored compelling themes, expanded imaginations, and taken us on remarkable journeys. Beyond the final six, all of our longlisted writers are exceptionally talented – and 2026’s record number of entries has been a box of delights for our reading team. We encourage everyone to keep writing, and are already looking forward to Discoveries 2027!'
Each writer skilfully draws from their intimate personal histories and interests, infused with imagination, telling stories that reach across time, space and topics: immersing us in literary thriller, mythological reimagining, subverted fantasy, and body horror; transporting us to 1990s Kashmir, sixteenth-century Scotland and the folklore of West Africa; questioning power structures and the status quo, interrogating human-inflicted environmental decay, and examining alienation and othering.
Read on to meet the six writers shortlisted for Discoveries 2026.
Mirha Butt, Notes From The Valley Of Unclaimed Daughters
Mirha Butt is a London-based public policy and research professional and a recent graduate of the LSE, raised in Watford. She is also an identical twin and the proud owner of a cat called Bibble! Her work centres the complexities of female relationships, whether in friendship, motherhood, sisterhood, or elsewhere.
- How does it feel to be shortlisted for Discoveries 2026? It feels genuinely surreal. I’ve always written just for myself, never really believing it was good enough for anyone else to read. Knowing that people see value in my work is deeply validating. In the space of two weeks, I’ve gone from 'this is just a fun escape from reality' to 'maybe I could actually become a published author'.
- What key themes do you explore in your writing? I’m drawn to complicated womanhood, female relationships, and the beauty and pain of loving other women—in friendships, motherhood, sisterhood, and everything in between. I also explore grief, desire, inherited trauma, resistance, and the way ordinary life keeps going even when history is trying to kick the door down.
Uduak-Abasi Ekong, Welcome Back, Darling
Uduak-Abasi Ekong is a Manchester-based Nigerian writer. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Afreada, The Bournemouth Journal, Ojuju Magazine, Wensum Literary, Everscribe Magazine, Brittle Paper, and Ekondo Review. She was runner-up for the inaugural Hilary Mantel Prize for Fiction and a winner of the 2025 Book Edit New Writers’ Prize. Her work has also been shortlisted or longlisted for the Bath Novel Awards, Exeter Novel Prize, Merky New Writers’ Prize, and Creative Future Writers’ Award. She is a 2026 SmokeLong Emerging Writer Fellow and a Faber Academy alumna.
- How does it feel to be shortlisted for Discoveries 2026? I thought the longlist was as good as it gets so I'm still in shock to find out I’ve made it to the shortlist. I'm honoured to be surrounded by such incredible talent and deeply grateful to the Discoveries Prize team for believing in my words.
- What initially inspired your novel-in-progress? It was inspired by the inevitability of grief once you allow yourself to love deeply. I was interested in the intensity of that attachment and how far someone might go to hold onto a person they love, even after death has tried to separate them.
Melissa Oliver-Powell, Sea-Mouth
Melissa is a lecturer in film studies and literature at the University of York, where it’s her job to introduce unsuspecting English lit students to weird and wonderful bits of world cinema. As a researcher, she has published an academic book, Pepsi and the Pill, and several articles and chapters on gender and sexuality in film. After years of thinking about feminist and queer studies in her day job (and beyond it), she is now exploring these ideas and passions in more untamed forms through fiction.
- How does it feel to be shortlisted for Discoveries 2026? Literally incredible. I've reread the email a frankly embarrassing number of times to check it's real (I'm now nearly sure it is...). My self-belief in my writing has wavered a lot over the past few years, and I never thought I'd make it onto a list like this, in the company of such amazing writers - past, present and future.
- Which female authors inspire you to write, or have shaped you most as a writer? Julia Armfield’s Our Wives Under the Sea is a huge influence on my novel. Jackie Kay’s short stories have always been really important to me too; no one quite captures the beauty and sadness of the everyday like she does. And my love of ‘disgusting women’ literature was sparked in my early twenties by Marie Darrieussecq. I’m really interested in écriture feminine, especially Hélène Cixous. Contemporary queer author Laura Kay has also been a brilliant mentor and inspiration.
Jo O'Neill, The Peat Cutter's Wife
After a hectic career living and working in South Africa, Norway, the Netherlands and Scotland, Jo hung up her construction helmet in 2023 and returned to England to fulfil a lifelong dream and write full time. Now Jo lives in the South of England and is an active member of her local writers’ group - Reading Writers - who she describes as the most supportive, talented group she could ever hope to meet. She lives with her husband, John, a professional artist.
- How does it feel to be shortlisted for Discoveries 2026? So thrilled, lucky and grateful. I know how fine the margins are between writers' work and it's an honour to even be considered among such a group. Writing means so much to me, and this particular novel means everything because of the story it tells. Thank you Discoveries.
- Are there any other locations that have a special connection for you or your novel-in-progress? I live in a village called Silchester, in Berkshire. Until 2024 I lived in Scotland and that inspired me to write my current novel, which is set there. I have previously lived in several other countries and feel especially connected to Norway. My husband is Irish and it is about time I got to know that wonderful country better. When it comes to writing, I'll follow a story anywhere it takes me, but tend to be inspired by where I am at the time.
Sithara Ranasinghe, The Spare
Sithara Ranasinghe was born in Sri Lanka and raised in Loughborough. Her writing has been featured in Teen Vogue, Cake Zine, Design Observer and Eaten. She posts niche historical deep dives on her Substack, Sithara’s Newslettara, and co-hosts the podcast Further Reading.
Her novel-in-progress, The Spare, aims to poke fun at fantasy tropes with as much love as possible.
The 'wait, are we the bad guys?' colonial themes in this novel are informed by her experience as a British Sri Lankan.
- How does it feel to be shortlisted for Discoveries 2026? I'm mostly just shocked! I still can't actually believe that any of this is happening. It feels so amazing (and surprising!) to have made it to the shortlist. If I could pirouette, I would hit 500 of them really fast.
- When did you begin writing? When I was a kid, I would fold sheets of printer paper together and write 'books' about fairies and ghosts. I then moved onto writing very bad emo-flavoured second world fantasy in spiral-bound notebooks. With that, I think it’s fair to say I’ve been writing fantasy my whole life, but I only started taking it (somewhat) seriously very recently.
Ruixi Zhang, Confessions of an Alien
Ruixi Zhang is an exophonic writer based in London. Born and raised in China, she studied English and psychology at Wellesley College, a women’s university in the US, before coming to the UK for an MA in comparative literature at the University of Oxford. Her debut short story appeared in Colorado Review. Her novel-in-progress was longlisted for the Bridport Prize in 2025. An alumna of the HarperCollins Author Academy, she has been awarded the Curtis Brown Creative Breakthrough Scholarship and the Faber Academy Scholarship.
She is currently working on her debut novel, Confessions of an Alien, a literary thriller.
- How does it feel to be shortlisted for Discoveries 2026? I feel like I have found a home as a writer. Since being longlisted, I have learned that Discoveries is much more than a writing prize: It is also a community of women writers who support and celebrate one another. I hope, or rather believe, that together we can create 'the poems of our climate' (to quote Wallace Stevens). I look forward to the exciting journey ahead, filled with new friends and more stories to tell!
- What made you enter Discoveries in 2026? I entered Discoveries for the first time in 2025. I was not selected, which motivated me to improve my novel and enter again in 2026. I took the Writing Your Novel course and the Edit & Pitch course with CBC, which was made possible by the Breakthrough Writers' Programme scholarship (thank you!). I received invaluable feedback from my tutors Chris, Lauren, Anna, and my peers, which helped me interrogate every scene and hone my pitch.
Congratulations to these fantastic writers! The winner announcement will follow on Thursday 28 May.
All six shortlisted writers will be offered a mentoring session with a Curtis Brown agent plus free enrolment on a Curtis Brown Creative six-week online course (worth £230).
One promising writer from the shortlist of six will be named the Discoveries Scholar. This writer will win a free scholarship to attend a three-month Writing Your Novel course with Curtis Brown Creative (worth £1,900).
The winner will be offered representation by an agent from the Curtis Brown Group and a cash prize of £5,000.