Aitken Alexander authors make up a quarter of the longlist for the Dylan Thomas Prize, the world’s largest and most prestigious literary prize for young writers.

The prize announcement reads as follows: “The highly lauded poet Andrew McMillan has been recognised for his gritty and magnificent first novel Pity, which is set across three generations of a South Yorkshire mining family, and is both a lament for a lost way of life as well as a celebration of resilience and the possibility for change… strained family relationships are also explored, with Jo Hamya and Rebecca Watson both following up their smash-hit debuts Three Rooms and Little Scratch with extraordinary second novels. Hamya is recognised for The Hypocrite, which considers the fractured dynamic between a father and daughter unravelling over a decade, while Watson delves into the complexities of an estranged brother and sister as they search for forgiveness, in I Will Crash.“

The shortlist will be announced on Thursday 20 March.