London, 9.30am, 15 April 2008: The Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction today announces the 2008 shortlist. Now in its thirteenth year, the Prize celebrates excellence, originality and accessibility in international women’s writing.

'We spent a great deal of time in the judging meeting asking the question, "Is this a book you feel passionately about? Is it a book that you might pass onto a friend and urge them to read?"' commented Kirsty Lang, Chair of judges. 'We all felt these six books passed that test.'

She continued, “''m extremely pleased we have three first novels as well as some very established authors on a list that reflects the scope, variety and international breadth of the Orange Prize.'

This year’s shortlist honours both new and well-established writers. Only one author, Rose Tremain, has previously been shortlisted (2004).

The shortlist is

Nancy Huston Fault Lines Atlantic Books
Sadie Jones The Outcast Chatto & Windus
Charlotte Mendelson When We Were Bad Picador
Heather O’Neill Lullabies for Little Criminals Quercus
Rose Tremain The Road Home Chatto & Windus
Patricia Wood Lottery William Heinemann American

The Prize was set up in 1996 to celebrate and promote fiction by women throughout theworld to the widest range of readers possible and is awarded for the best novel of the year written by a woman.

The winner will be presented with a cheque for £30,000 and a limited edition bronze statue known as ‘the Bessie’, created by artist Grizel Niven. Both are anonymously endowed. The award ceremony will take place in The Ballroom, Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London, on 4 June 2008.

Previous winners are Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for Half of a Yellow Sun (2007), Zadie Smith for On Beauty (2006), Lionel Shriver for We Need to Talk About Kevin (2005), Andrea Levy for Small Island (2004), Valerie Martin for Property (2003), Ann Patchett for Bel Canto (2002), Kate Grenville for The Idea of Perfection (2001), Linda Grant for When I Lived in Modern Times (2000), Suzanne Berne for A Crime in the Neighbourhood (1999), Carol Shields for Larry’s Party (1998), Anne Michaels for Fugitive Pieces (1997), and Helen Dunmore for A Spell of Winter (1996).