A shortlist has been announced for the £10,000 (about $13,560) Desmond Elliott Prize, which honors a first novel written in English and published in the U.K. This year's Desmond Elliott shortlisted titles are How to Be Human by Paula Cocozza, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman and We That Are Young by Preti Taneja. The winner will be revealed June 20.
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Jeanne Thornton and Mecca Jamilah Sullivan have won the 2018 Judith A. Markowitz Award for Emerging LGBTQ Writers, which has a prize of $1,000. Thornton and Sullivan will be honored as part of the 30th annual Lambda Literary Awards ceremony on June 4 in New York City.
Thornton is a publisher at Instar Books and has edited anthologies including Nerve Endings: The New Trans Erotic and We're Still Here: All-Trans Comics. She is also the author of The Black Emerald and The Dream of Doctor Bantam.
Sullivan teaches at UMass Amherst, writes regularly on sexuality, identity, and poetics in contemporary African Diaspora culture and is associate editor for arts & culture at The Feminist Wire. She is also the author of the short story collection Blue Talk and Love.