We’re delighted to announce that We Pretty Pieces of Flesh by Colwill Brown has been shorted for the 2025 Goldsmiths Prize.

Established in 2013, The Goldsmiths Prize celebrates fiction that breaks the mould or extends the possibilities of the novel form. The annual prize of £10,000 is awarded to a book that is deemed genuinely novel and which embodies the spirit of invention that characterises the genre at its best.

Sackville, senior lecturer in creative writing at Goldsmiths, University of London, said: “Slippery, genre-defying, vibrant, witty and profound: our shortlist of six genuinely novel novels embody the creative spirit of the Prize. These books in their very different ways take full advantage of the form’s resources and possibilities, bringing to the page startling, refreshing, unsettling ways of relationships, friendship, family ties and girlhood to our connections with nature, with our working lives, with art and even with reality.”

Speaking on We Pretty Pieces of Flesh, Judge Mark Haddon said:  “An absolute tour de force. An interwoven braid of narratives, ranging from prehistoric times to the present day, all set in the Cumbria and all centered on Helm, the only named wind in the British Isles. By turns moving and funny, theological and ecological, sinister and sexy, it is relentlessly inventive and always entertaining.”

The shortlist was announced following the annual New Statesman/Goldsmiths Prize lecture, delivered by Geoff Dyer at the Southbank Centre. The shortlisted writers will read from their novels at the Southbank Centre on Wednesday 22nd October as part of the London Literature Festival. The winner of the Goldsmiths Prize 2025 will be announced at a ceremony at Foyles, Charing Cross Road on Wednesday 5th November 2025.

To find out more and see the full shortlist, click here.