UA writers shortlisted for the 2013 Encore Award

Eleanor Catton and Sheila Heti are among the six writers shortlisted for the 2013 Encore Award.

The £10,000 Encore Award for the best second novel was first awarded in 1990 and is sponsored by Lucy Astor. The award fills a niche in the catalogue of literary prizes by celebrating the achievement of outstanding second novels, often neglected in comparison to the attention given to promising first books.

Eleanor Catton's Man Booker winning The Luminaries is set on the goldfields of Victorian New Zealand, where a complex network of characters are drawn together by a dark mystery. Sheila Heti's How Should a Person Be?, longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2013, sees a twentysomething playwright reeling from personal and professional crisis explore the way we live now.