The 2026 Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlist is out, and it has delivered a moment that African literature will want to remember. Marcia Hutchinson’s The Mercy Step, published by Cassava Republic Press, has made the cut, one of six novels selected from what was already a strong longlist!

The shortlist, announced by chair of judges Julia Gillard, former Prime Minister of Australia, spotlights what the panel described as novels that interrogate the roles women play in society, the power they hold, and how far they are able or willing to wield it. Four of the six shortlisted titles are debuts, and three publishers are celebrating their first-ever shortlistings for the Prize. Cassava Republic is one of them.

The full shortlist in alphabetical order: Flashlight by Susan Choi (Jonathan Cape), Dominion by Addie E. Citchens (Europa Editions UK), The Correspondent by Virginia Evans (Michael Joseph), The Mercy Step by Marcia Hutchinson (Cassava Republic Press), Kingfisher by Rozie Kelly (Saraband), and Heart the Lover by Lily King (Canongate).

bibi bakare-yusuf – okayafrica

The significance of Hutchinson’s inclusion was not lost on her publisher. Cassava Republic took to Twitter to say what many in the African literary community were already feeling:

“The Mercy Step by @Marciathewriter is SHORTLISTED for the 2026 Women’s Prize for Fiction. This feels surreal and we are beyond proud!! @womensprize For the first time in the Women’s Prize for Fiction’s thirty-year history, an African-owned, Black and woman-led small press is on the shortlist. We are that press. Marcia Hutchinson wrote from life. We published with conviction. That’s the whole story.”

It is a landmark moment, not only for Cassava Republic, but for the broader ecosystem of African publishing that has long produced work of the highest order without receiving the institutional recognition routinely granted to larger Western houses. That a small, independent, African-led press has broken through at one of anglophone fiction’s most prestigious prizes is the kind of milestone that reshapes what ambition looks like for publishers on the continent.

The winner of the 2026 Women’s Prize for Fiction will be announced on Thursday 11 June 2026 at the Women’s Prize Trust’s summer party in Bedford Square Gardens, London. The winning author receives £30,000 and the iconic ‘Bessie’ statuette.