The 2026 Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist is out, and among the 16 titles selected is The Mercy Step by Marcia Hutchinson, published by Cassava Republic Press! The same week, the book was also shortlisted for the Discover Prize at the British Book Awards. It is a significant moment, not just for Hutchinson, but for African publishing and the case for independent presses everywhere.

Hutchinson is a British-Jamaican lawyer, community activist, and former Labour Councillor who became a full-time writer at sixty. She grew up in Bradford, was the first pupil from her school to go to Oxford, and was awarded an MBE for services to Cultural Diversity in 2010. The Mercy Step is her debut solo novel, and before it found a home with Cassava Republic, it was passed over more than 50 times.

The novel draws on her own childhood: it follows Mercy, the youngest child of a Windrush generation Jamaican family in 1960s Bradford, navigating a chaotic household shaped by her father’s violence, her mother’s devotion to the Church, and her own fierce inner life, all rendered, as Cassava Republic describes it, with “a voice so precise, so full of wit and quiet defiance.”

When the manuscript arrived at Cassava Republic, “something shifted”. The publisher wrote this week: “When we first read this manuscript, something shifted in the room… we couldn’t imagine it not existing in the world. So, we published it. That is what independent publishers do. We back the books we believe in, even when the path has been long and difficult. Marcia’s voice had been long prepared for this moment. We simply had the privilege of opening the door.”

Founded in Nigeria in 2006 and operating out of Abuja and London, Cassava Republic has spent nearly two decades building a list that takes African and Black diasporic writing seriously on its own terms. This week’s news is a vindication of that mission, and Cassava Republic was clear about what it means: “This is why small, independent, Black-owned publishing matters. Not as a corrective. But as a home. A place where a writer in her sixties can debut. Where a story rooted in Black British life can be treated with the full literary ambition it deserves.” Nine of the 16 books on this year’s Women’s Prize longlist come from independent publishers as well, a detail that does not go unnoticed.

The shortlist will be announced on 22 April 2026. The winner receives £30,000 and will be revealed on 11 June in London. For now, The Mercy Step, and the publisher that believed in it when more than 50 others did not, is exactly where it deserves to be. If you haven’t read it yet, Cassava Republic puts it simply: “This is your moment.” Get it here.