The family of Ved Mehta; the Centre for the Creative and the Critical, Ashoka University; and Balliol College, Oxford University, are pleased to announce the shortlist for the inaugural Ved Mehta Prize in Creative Nonfiction, which recognises an outstanding work of creative nonfiction published in English anywhere in the world during the preceding year.

The judges for the inaugural prize are:

·         Merve Emre, the Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing and Criticism at Wesleyan University, Connecticut, and Director of the Shapiro Center for Creative Writing and Criticism.

·         Seamus Perry, Professor of English Literature in the English Faculty at the University of Oxford and Master of Balliol College, Oxford.

·         Vijay Seshadri, Pulitzer Prize–winning author and member of the Faculty of English and Creative Writing at Sarah Lawrence College, New York.

Together, they have selected a shortlist that reflects the diversity of contemporary creative nonfiction:

·         The Mind Electric by Pria Anand (Virago; Washington Square Press)

·         Charlottesville: An American Story by Deborah Baker (Graywolf Press)

·         Bibliophobia by Sarah Chihaya (Random House)

·         Homework by Geoff Dyer (Canongate; Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

·         Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li (Fourth Estate; Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

·         Greyhound by Joanna Pocock (Fitzcarraldo Editions; Soft Skull)

Commenting on the shortlist, Vijay Seshadri said: “Reading through the wealth of current nonfiction writing while accompanied by the spirit of Ved Mehta has been illuminating and invigorating.”

Ved Mehta, the author of twenty-seven books, was a staff writer at The New Yorker from 1960 to 1994, covering subjects as varied as history, philosophy, travel, politics, theology, and linguistics. Taken as a whole, his work showed the breadth of what creative nonfiction can do.

The prize, awarded by a different panel of three judges each year, seeks to expand the international profile of creative nonfiction, honouring books distinguished by their intellectual ambition, breadth, imagination, experimentation, and excellence of prose. For more about the prize, see vedmehtaprize.org.