I've been keeping my head down for the past few months, avoiding reviews and write-ups not as much in an 'I've transcended the need for other's approval of my work' way as in a 'holy crap how am I supposed to get all this marking done' way. Both of which, I suppose, garner the same result: I have even less of an idea of what's going on than usual.
So imagine my surprise when I got a text from Sara Helen (who is the kind of together person who usually knows what's going on) saying I was on the same longlist as Ali Smith. I assumed this meant that someone had done a round-up - x books that challenge the concept of structure, y books with female narrators, z books by authors with last names whose initial letter come after 'R' in the alphabet - that had been shared out for other's reading pleasure. But any list on which Ali Smith appears is bound to be a good list to be on, so I went to investigate.
The longlist in question happens to be for the Baileys Women's Prize.
The Prize's existence I was aware of before, but in much the same way I'm aware of knighthoods and the Nobel: it exits, other people are considered for it.
The Shore is one of twenty books in the running; the complete list can be read here and is utterly fantastic. And I'm counting that as my accomplishment for the decade, since the longlist is so much more than I'd been expecting - it wasn't so long ago that I was gearing myself up for agent rejections. I'm very glad that I wasn't aware that it was up for consideration, and I'm somewhat regretting having looked up the details of the judging process, since I can do absolutely nothing but wait, impotently, until it's over.
Amusingly enough, Henry appears to have found out through an online betting service e-mailing to offer him 33 to 1 odds on me winning.
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