Baillie Gifford winner of winners James Shapiro: ‘I draw a very sharp line between fiction and nonfiction’

The 1599 author on the difference between historians and novelists, looking at Shakespeare differently and hitchhiking to the Edinburgh festival to immerse himself in the bard’s work

James Shapiro wins Baillie Gifford anniversary prize with ‘extraordinary’ Shakespeare biography 1599

The English professor’s analysis of a pivotal year in the playwright’s life triumphed over a shortlist that included Craig Brown, Barbara Demick and Wade Davis

Dead Ink wins Republic of Consciousness prize with Missouri Williams’s ‘astonishing’ debut

The award, championing small presses with fewer than five staff, was won by The Doloriad – an audaciously original novel set in a post-apocalyptic dystopia

‘We were blown away’: how we chose the Women’s prize shortlist

As one of this year’s judges, I have been bowled over by the range and intensity of what we have read, and I’m sure you will be too

Three debut novels compete among Women’s prize for fiction shortlist

First-time novelists are joined by two former winners on the diverse list, as the six ‘ambitious and hard-hitting’ contenders are revealed

Kate Saunders obituary

Prize-winning novelist who won the Costa award for Five Children on the Western Front and whose Belfry Witches stories were adapted for TV

Dubravka Ugrešić obituary

Writer in Serbo-Croatian whose mix of stringency and wit, although ignored in her own country, led to her being talked of as a possible Nobel laureate

International Booker prize reveals ‘very cool and very sexy’ shortlist

Two of the six books are translated from languages that have never featured before in the prize

Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv by Andrey Kurkov review – bittersweet relic of a sunnier age

Longlisted for the 2023 International Booker prize, the newly translated novel by Ukraine’s leading author is, in today’s context, poignantly playful and ebullient

Booker shortlistee and UK playwright among winners of Windham-Campbell prizes

Recognising work in fiction, nonfiction, poetry and drama, the $175,000 awards aim to free writers to work without financial pressures

Stella prize 2023 shortlist: small publishers dominate Australian literary award

No major publishers represented among final six books in contention for $60,000 prize for female authors

Poem of ‘beauty, wit and grace’ about fathers and sons wins National Poetry Competition

Ex-New York cab driver Lee Stockdale wins £5,000 after My Dead Father’s General Store in the Middle of a Desert beat 17,000 other poems

Margo Jefferson wins 2023 Rathbones Folio prize

The writer and critic’s memoir, Constructing a Nervous System, was described as ‘astounding and rhapsodic’ by judges

Kenzaburō Ōe obituary

Nobel prize-winning writer whose novels linked the personal and political in exploring fatherhood and the legacy of war in Japan

Dylan Thomas prize shortlist includes four debuts

Three British writers are among the six nominees including Saba Sams for her short story collection, Send Nudes, and Warsan Shire for Bless the Daughter Raised By a Voice in Her Head