The 2011 shortlist

Hilary Mantel CBE was born in Glossop, Derbyshire in 1952. After studying Law, she was employed as a social worker then lived in Botswana for five years, followed by four years in Saudi Arabia, returning to Britain in the 1980s. Her novel, Wolf Hall (2009), won the 2009 Man Booker Prize for Fiction and the Walter Scott Prize and was shortlisted for the 2009 Costa Novel Award and 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction. Its sequel, Bring Up the Bodies (2012), also won the Man Booker, as well as the Costa Book Awards. In 2006 she was awarded a CBE, and in 2014 the DBE.

Will Cohu was born in Yorkshire in 1964. His books include Urban Dog (2001) and Out of the Woods (2007). His memoir, The Wolf Pit, was published in 2012 and shortlisted for the PEN/Ackerley Prize and he published his first much-acclaimed first novel, Nothing But Grass, was published in 2015.

Anthony Doerr was born in Cleveland, USA in 1973. A short story writer and novelist, he has won three O. Henry Prizes, the Rome Prize, the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize, the Hodder Fellowhip at Princeton University, and a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship. His most recent novel, All the Light We Cannot See, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Gerard Woodward was born in London in 1961 and studied art and anthropology. He has published five poetry collections including We Were Pedestrians (2005), which was shortlisted for the 2005 T.S. Eliot Prize. His 2004 novel I’ll Go To Bed At Noon was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Woodward lives in Bath, where he is Professor of Fiction at Bath Spa University and Director of its Contemporary Writing Centre.

Roshi Fernando was born in London of Sri Lankan parents. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Swansea. She won the 2009 Impress Prize for New Writers, was longlisted for the 2011 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize, was given a special commendation by the judges of the Manchester Fiction Prize and was longlisted for the Bridport Prize and the Fish Prize. Her debut collection of stories, Homesick, was published in 2013.

Yiyun Li grew up in Beijing and came to the United States in 1996. Her debut collection, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, PEN/Hemingway Award, Guardian First Book Award, and California Book Award for first fiction. She was selected by Granta as one of the 21 Best Young American Novelists under 35, and was named by The New Yorker as one of the top 20 writers under 40. She lives in Oakland, California.