Will She Make the Short List?

The short list for this year's Baileys Prize for Fiction will be announced tonight, and with competition this fierce, it's anyone's guess who will make the cut. The Baileys Prize, known as the Orange Prize for Fiction until this year, is an annual award given to the best English-language book written by a woman, as chosen by an all-female panel. The award is given out each June.

The past year has definitely been a good one for fiction by women, making it hard to pick a favorite for the prize. Will it be Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah, which just won the National Book Critics Circle Award? Will Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries be the first book to win both a Man Booker Prize and an Orange/Bailey's Prize? What about experienced powerhouse Margaret Atwood with her long awaited MaddAdam? Or can Donna Tartt's much talked-about latest work The Goldfinch go from being merely nominated for prestigious literary prizes to at long last winning one?

And then, of course, there are several new authors on the list as well, including Fatima Bhutto, Hannah Kent, and Audrey Magee. Who will make it into the final round? It remains to be seen, but the list will soon be whittled down from 20 titles to just six. So place your bets now.

And, because it makes an excellent reading list, check out the full long list before 14 of them have to say goodbye.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Americanah

Margaret Atwood – MaddAddam

Suzanne Berne – The Dogs of Littlefield

Fatima Bhutto – The Shadow of the Crescent Moon

Claire Cameron – The Bear

Lea Carpenter – Eleven Days

M.J. Carter – The Strangler Vine

Eleanor Catton – The Luminaries

Deborah Kay Davies – Reasons She Goes to the Woods

Elizabeth Gilbert – The Signature of All Things

Hannah Kent – Burial Rites

Rachel Kushner – The Flamethrowers

Jhumpa Lahiri – The Lowland

Audrey Magee – The Undertaking

Eimear McBride – A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing

Charlotte Mendelson – Almost English

Anna Quindlen – Still Life with Bread Crumbs

Elizabeth Strout – The Burgess Boys

Donna Tartt – The Goldfinch

Evie Wyld – All The Birds, Singing

UPDATE: The shortlist is out, and the titles that made the cut are Americanah, Burial Rites, The Lowland, The Undertaking, A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing, and — get your surprised face out — The Goldfinch. Let's see who takes home the prize.