Wendy Erskine's The Benefactors longlisted for 2026 Women's Prize for Fiction

Belfast-born author Wendy Erskine has been longlisted for the 2026 Women's Prize for Fiction for her acclaimed novel The Benefactors.

The longlist includes 16 international titles and also features authors such as Lucy Apps, Susan Choi, Maria Hutchinson, Alice Evelyn Yang and more.

This year’s Chair of Judges includes Irish authors, broadcaster and DJ Annie Macmanus, aka Annie Mac, as well as Julia Gillard, former Prime Minister of Australia, poet, novelist and essayist, Mona Arshi, author, presenter, poet and speaker, Salma El-Wardany, and writer, podcaster, actor and comedian, Cariad Lloyd.

Erskine’s The Benefactors came out in 2025. It explores power and class in Belfast through the story of Misty Johnson, who is sexually assaulted by three teenage boys, each of them belonging to affluent families.

Speaking of the book’s themes to Hot Press in December, the author explained that the tree perpetrators were “not members of the super-rich. These are not the sons of oligarchs – they’re middle class. But even people in that position, in the case of my novel at least, they still have a lot of advantages that Misty and her family just don’t have.”

The judges are set to narrow down the longlist to a shortlist of six, which will be announced on April 22 .

The winner of the 2026 Women’s Prize for Fiction will receive £30,000, anonymously endowed. It will be revealed on Thursday June 11 at the Women’s Prize Trust’s summer party in Bedford Square Gardens, London.

You can check out the full longlist below:

• • Gloria Don’t Speak by Lucy Apps (Weatherglass Books)
  • Paradiso 17 by Hannah Lillith Assadi (4th Estate, HarperCollins Publishers UK)
  • Moderation by Elaine Castillo (Atlantic Books)
  • Flashlight by Susan Choi (Jonathan Cape, Vintage, Penguin Random House UK)
  • Dominion by Addie E. Citchens (Europa Editions UK)
  • The Benefactors by Wendy Erskine (Sceptre, Hodder & Stoughton, Hachette UK)
  • The Correspondent by Virginia Evans (Michael Joseph, Penguin Random House UK)
  • The Mercy Step by Marcia Hutchinson (Cassava Republic Press)
  • The Others by Sheena Kalayil (Fly on the Wall Press)
  • Kingfisher by Rozie Kelly (Saraband)
  • Heart the Lover by Lily King (Canongate)
  • Audition by Katie Kitamura (Fern Press, Vintage, Penguin Random House UK)
  • A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar (Scribner, Simon & Schuster UK)
  • Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy (Canongate)
  • The Best of Everything by Kit de Waal (Tinder Press, Headline Publishing Group, Hachette UK)
  • A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing by Alice Evelyn Yang (Dead Ink)