A slew of Irish talent has been recognised by the Writers' Prize shortlist with Paul Murray, Anne Enright and Mark O'Connell among those named.

The Writers’ prize, previously known as the Rathbones Folio prize, is a competition open to all forms of literature.

The Writers’ Prize is the only international, English-language award nominated and adjudicated purely by other writers. The three shortlists – fiction, non-fiction and poetry – each consist of three titles each.

One winner from each of the three categories will be awarded a £2,000 prize, and of these three, one writer will be crowned the overall winner, receiving an additional £30,000.

Joining Enright and Murray in the fiction category shortlist is English literary superstar Zadie Smith, who has been nominated for her historical novel The Fraud.  Murray's Bee Sting, which won the An Post Irish Book of the Year award, also received a nod in the fiction category, while Anne Enright's The Wren, the Wren also made the three-title long list.

Meanwhile in the nonfiction category, Thunderclap by art critic Laura Cumming and Mark O Connell's true crime offering, The Thread of Violence  have been shortlisted alongside Naomi Klein’s exploration of truth in politics, Doppelganger.

In the poetry category three poetry collections were nominated: Self-Portrait as Othello by Jason Allen-Paisant, The Home Child by Liz Berry and Bright Fear by Mary Jean Chan.

At last year’s Rathbones Folio prize ceremony it was announced that investment management company Rathbones would be stepping down as sponsor, and prize director Minna Fry said that the award was seeking new sponsorship.

In November of 2023 the award announced its' rebrand as the 'Writers’ Prize'.

Releasing a statement on the rebranding, the Writers' Prize said: “Thanks to the generosity of a number of private individuals, book industry-related businesses, members of the Folio Academy and Trusts, the prize will go ahead with the same prize pot of £36,000,”

However, diverging from the style of the Rathbones Folio prize, there are no judges for the inaugural Writer's Prize and instead, the shortlists have been chosen by the members of the Folio Academy, which is made up of more than 350 recognised writers.

Having voted for the shortlist, academy members will now have access to all nine titles thanks to a partnership with NetGalley, a company that provides electronic copies of books to reviewers. Academy members will then vote for their winners, which will be announced at the London book fair on 13 March.

Previous winners of the Rathbones Folio prize have included Colm Tóibín, Carmen Maria Machado and Valeria Luiselli and was first awarded in 2014, making this year's rebrand the tenth year of the literary fiction prize.