To be young, talented, and (maybe) rich

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The Dylan Thomas Prize, all $119,938.38 (or £60,000) of it, is awarded annually to one skilled, not-yet-30-year-old writer. This weekend, the 14 authors on the prize’s long list were announced. One finalist -- Dinaw Mengestu -- has already done well in the awards department, winning the Guardian’s 2007 First Book Award and the Los Angeles Times’ 2007 Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction.

Authors can hail from any country in the world, as long as they write in English. The long list is:

Priya Basil (U.K.) for the novel ‘Ishq and Mushq’
Susan Barker (U.K.) for the novel ‘The Orientalist and the Ghost’
Caroline Bird (U.K.) for the poetry collection ‘Trouble Came to the Turnip’
Zoë Brigley (U.K.) for the poetry collection ‘The Secret’
Ben Dolnick (U.S.) for the novel ‘Zoology’
Ceridwen Dovey (South Africa) for the novel ‘Blood Kin’
Joe Dunthorne (U.K.) for the novel ‘Submarine’
Susan Fletcher (U.K.) for the novel ‘Oystercatchers’
Adam Green (U.K.) for the novel ‘Satsuma Sun - Mover’
Edward Hogan (U.K.) for the novel ‘Blackmoor’
Porochista Khakpour (Iran) for the novel ‘Sons and Other Flammable Objects’
Nam Le (Vietnam) for the short story collection ‘The Boat’
Dinaw Mengestu (Ethiopia) for ‘Children of the Revolution’ (published in the U.S. as ‘The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears’)
Kei Miller (Jamaica) for the poetry collection ‘There Is an Anger That Moves’
Ross Raisin (U.K.) for the novel ‘God’s Own Country’ (published in the U.S. as ‘Out Backward’)
Karen Russell (U.S.) for the short story collection ‘St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised By Wolves’

Just being nominated is an honor. But I bet it’s hard to remember that winning isn’t everything when the prize is nearly $120,000.

Carolyn Kellogg

photo of author Nam Le reading in Los Angeles by Carolyn Kellogg