Yet more awards news, award-watchers… this time for the Terry Pratchett Prize’s First Novel Award – aka Anywhere But Here, Anywhen But Now.

The prize was first launched two years ago, with a prize of £20,000 for previously unpublished novelists. Sir Terry Pratchett said at the time that he was looking for “stories set on Earth, although it may be an Earth that might have been, or might yet be, one that has gone down a different leg of the famous trousers of time […] the possibilities are literally endless, but remember, it’s all on Earth. Maybe the continents will be different and the climate unfamiliar, but the physics will be the same as ours. What goes up must come down, ants are ant-sized because if they were any bigger their legs wouldn’t carry them. In short, the story must be theoretically possible on some version of the past, present or future of a planet Earth.”

The shortlisted novels and  novelists this year, drawn from over 500 entrants, are:

The Unspoken Death of the Amazing Flying Boy by Jean Burdett

Bloodline by Sophie Constable

The Hive by Alexander Maskill

The Way Through the Woods by Robin Pearson

A Kill in the Morning by Graeme Shimmin

The Shadows of Annwn by Catherine Whittle

The judging panel is comprised of Sir Terry Pratchett, Rob Wilkins, Editorial Director Simon Taylor, Publicist Lynsey Dalladay and Alex Veasey from The Forbidden Planet. A winner will be announced on the 31st May.