New novelists pip big names to Orange prize

Established authors such as Pat Barker, Joyce Carol Oates and Jeanette Winterson have given way to seven first-time novelists in the long list for the Orange Broadband Prize for women fiction writers as the chair of the judging panel complained that the list was becoming overrun by "misery memoirs". Broadcaster Kirsty Lang said: "Reading 120 books I did find myself thinking, 'Oh god, not another dead baby'. There were a hell of a lot of abused children and family secrets.".

The list, announced on Monday, does however include last year's Booker winner, Irish author Anne Enright, and writers from the Middle East as well as the Scottish writer AL Kennedy, who has already won the £30,000 Costa award for her harrowing wartime novel Day.

The Orange prize has been controversial since its launch in 1996 and this year is no exception, with the novelist Tim Lott calling the award a "sexist con-trick". The writer AS Byatt has since joined Lott in calling the prize sexist and "never needed". She told the Times that she was so critical of what it stands for that she forbids her publishers to submit her novels for consideration.

Meanwhile Lang has defended the inclusion of a 'celebrity judge', the 22-year-old singer Lily Allen (pictured), on this year's judging panel. "I was quite worried because there were one or two headlines [about her]. But she was very much part of the email correspondence between the judges," she said. "And she is quite well-read generally." The winner will be announced on June 4.