Ali Smith Shortlisted for First Goldsmiths Prize

The modern novel would be nowhere without the innovations of queer writers -- James, Proust, Forster, Woolf, Mann, Gide, Stein, Isherwood, Genet, Capote, Vidal, Baldwin, Spark, Winterson -- so it's entirely fitting that the new prize aiming "to reward fiction that breaks the mould or opens up new possibilities for the novel form" includes lesbian rulebender Ali Smith. Of 123 entries, these six are the finalists:

Jim Crace, Harvest [Kindle], this year's Booker frontrunner

Lars Iyer, Exodus, highbrow black comedy of academia

Eimear McBride, A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing, a young woman's stream of consciousness

David Peace, Red or Dead, 600 pages on legendary 1970s Liverpool soccer coach Bill Shankly

Ali Smith, Artful [Kindle], erudite free-for-all blending essay, lecture, and fiction

Philip Terry, Tapestry, the story of the Norman Conquest told by the English embroiderers who wove the Bayeux Tapestry.